Mobile Computing | News

Survey: Developing for Android Is Faster

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/15/14

If you're wondering what platform to start out on for that educational mobile app, you may want to begin with Android since that development process appears to go faster than developing apps for iOS or Windows Phone. On almost all platforms the largest part of development time is spent on testing and debugging; the only exceptions are Firefox and Tizen, where coding takes more time. Also, while Android developers spend the most time on testing and debugging, they spent more time on performance and interface optimization than developers for other platforms.

Those results come out of the latest mobile development survey done by Evans Data, which specializes in doing market research of the software development industry.

The latest "Mobile Development Survey" questioned 464 developers who were actively developing apps for mobile devices. Four of 10 Android developers reported that their typical app was finished in one month or less compared to 36 percent for iOS and 34 percent for Windows Phone.

Android, which passed iOS in spring 2011 as the most popular development target for smartphones, is now the preferred development platform for tablets too. Eighty four percent of developers programming for tablets target Android, 62 percent target iOS, and 52 percent target Windows.

According to the researchers, most developers target multiple platforms for their work. They also develop for multiple screen sizes.

"Targeting multiple screen sizes is definitely the way to go," said Janel Garvin, Evans' CEO. "The benefit of having your app run across the gamut of device types is obvious, and while there are difficulties in synchronization across device types and in the range of graphics capabilities that are supported by different screens, the benefits still outweigh the effort."