iOS Soars Ahead of Android Development As Apple Quietly Makes Move Into The Enterprise Market
The Apple iOS is surging ahead of the Google Android platform for enterprise development, according to survey results from Appcelerator, the mobile platform development company.
Context & Ripple Effects
Appcelerator had already identified Android fragmentation as a source of declining developer interest in a March 2012 IDC-Appcelerator study. Its April release of Titanium 2.0 and cloud services positioned the company around the broader problem of building and operating mobile apps across platforms.
The new enterprise-development survey makes that platform split commercially consequential: Apple is attracting the developer attention needed to turn iOS into a stronger business-software target, while Android’s fragmentation becomes a disadvantage in corporate deployments.
First-order effects
- Apple gains an enterprise-development advantage as Appcelerator’s survey indicates developers favor iOS over Google Android for business apps.
- Google Android faces immediate pressure to address fragmentation, which Appcelerator had previously tied to weakening developer interest.
Second-order effects
- Enterprise software teams are more likely to prioritize iOS in their mobile roadmaps, concentrating early app availability and testing resources on Apple’s platform.
- Appcelerator’s Titanium and cloud offerings become more relevant to developers that still need to support Android alongside an iOS-first enterprise strategy.
Third-order effects
- If enterprise developers continue to treat fragmentation as a material cost, mobile-platform competition will be shaped not only by device adoption but by the consistency of each platform’s development and deployment environment.
The trend: Enterprise mobility is becoming a contest over developer efficiency, with platform consistency increasingly determining which operating systems receive business-app investment first.