Mobile Computing

iPad Development Surges Ahead

• By Keith Ward
• 04/09/10

The release of the iPad has been hyped like no product since, well, the last new Apple gadget, the industry-transforming iPhone.

If early returns are any indication, application development for the iPad has been similarly ignited. Flurry, a company that tracks and analyzes mobile application development, recently reported that of all the new mobile application development projects kicked off in February and March 2010, 22 percent were targeted toward the iPad.

That number is staggering, considering Apple hadn't shipped a single unit. Flurry added that "developers continue to develop for the iPad at a fever pitch."

The iPad development growth appears to be coming at the expense of Google's Android OS and Apple's iPhone. New project starts for the iPhone dipped from 78 percent to 67 percent over the same two-month period, and Android sunk from 18 percent to 10 percent, according to Flurry's analytics.

That isn't to say that either of those platforms are suffering. In fact, new Android projects grew by 50 percent from February to March, Flurry data showed. It's just that iPad development efforts have overtaken the dev efforts of those other projects.

As of this writing, there were 259 iPad-specific applications listed in the App Store under the "Education" category. There were more than 13,000 education apps listed for the iPhone (which, of course, are supposed to run on both iPhone and iPad devices).

It's worth noting that development for Research in Motion's BlackBerry has nearly disappeared under the avalanche of iPad/iPhone and Android development. According to Flurry statistics, BlackBerry development has declined from about 4 percent to 1 percent.