Despite The iPhone, App Developers Remain OS Agnostic

With all you hear about the iPhone and its thousands of available apps, you’d think it’s the only mobile OS that developers are interested in.  A new study reveals that while the iPhone is an important piece of the puzzle, developers are still remaining OS agnostic- meaning they’re developing their apps to run on multiple mobile operating systems instead of going platform-specific.

Sponsored by research firm Chubby Brain, the study looked at venture-backed 2009 mobile app start-ups and determined that 67 percent are developing their applications to work on multiple platforms- namely, the top six mobile operating systems: iPhone, Palm, RIM, Android, Symbian, and Windows.  In addition, 33 percent are developing for a single platform- primarily the iPhone.

Of the 67 percent of developers that are developing for multiple platforms, more than 3/4 (76 percent) are developing their apps to run on all six primary operating systems.  Additionally, 12 percent are developing for only two out of the top six- that being RIM and the iPhone.

It’s interesting research, though likely skewed due to the fact that the sample size included only venture-funded app start-ups.  With VC funding, it’s likely the developers want to get their apps to as many consumers as possible, and being platform-specific would be limiting.  If the research included all apps being developed right now, you would undoubtedly see a spike in iPhone-specific development. Source: Mobile Marketing Watch

Smartphones: Selling Well in Q2

New handset sales data from Gartner shows smartphones outperforming the overall mobile devices market in 2Q09, and were a key factor in consumers upgrading devices.

According to Gartner figures, worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 286.1 million units in Q209, a 6.1 percent decline over the year earlier quarter, but smartphone sales rose 27 percent over the same period, surpassing 40 million units for the first time (40.96 million).

Apple saw the largest rise in its share of the global smartphone market in 2Q09, rising from a 2.8 percent share in 2Q08 to 13.3 percent. With 5.4 million iPhones units in the quarter (a 51 percent growth), Apple retained the number three position in the smartphone market, which it has held since 3Q08. Nokia continued to lead the smartphone market but saw its share decline from 47.4 percent to 45 percent despite an uplift in unit sales.

RIM and Apple grew their shares year-on-year. It noted that Google’s Android platform, which accounted for just under 2 percent of the market in 2Q09, will intensify competition in the smartphone platform market when further Android-based devices come to market later this year, which could put pressure on Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.

Thanks to the release of the iPhone 3GS, AT&T added nearly 840,000 new iPhone customers last quarter, which accounted for about 60% of the carrier’s new subscriber adds, reports Information Week. But the iPhone won’t be exclusive forever, and traditional voice revenues are also on a downward trend, so the carrier said it will branch out to offer multiple devices that use mobile data plans in order to generate new revenues.

Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T’s wireless unit, told Bloomberg. “There’s a plethora of those things that are just beginning to get to market that I think will dramatically change the industry.”

AT&T, based in Dallas, announced a deal with Plastic Logic last month to roll out an electronic reader in 2010 that will compete with Amazon’s Kindle. Worldwide shipments of e-books are expected to grow from almost 1 million units in 2008 to close to 30 million units in 2013, according to market research company In-Stat.

There are as many as 2 million gadgets such as e-books, security devices and utility meters connected to wireless networks in the U.S., said Roger Entner, an analyst at Nielsen Co. in Boston. The market, which generates less than $100 million in annual revenue today, will grow as much as 100 percent a year, he said.

Gartner says smartphones accounted for 12 per cent of all mobile handset sales in Q4 2008, compared to 11 per cent in Q4 2007 while U.S. smartphone sales, according to another survey by NPD, account for 23% of all handset sales in Q4 (up from 12% last year). Frost & Sullivan estimates that smartphone downloads from all app stores will reach $6.67 billion by 2014. Shipments of Open-Source smartphones may hit 223M by 2014, says Jupiter Research. Source: www.dailywireless.org