WP7 losing developer mindshare? Not so sure...

Mary Jo Foley provides her take on the AppCelerator survey which paints a pretty gloomy picture of WP7 development.

Among the 2,700-plus developers using the Appcelerator Titanium cross-platform development environment surveyed by the research outfits in mid-April, Microsoft is now considered the distant third horse in the mobile race, trailing Apple and Android, but edging out RIM.

....

Microsoft fell seven points since the last survey, with 29 percent of the developers surveyed saying they are “very interested” in Windows Phone 7. But Blackberry phones dropped eleven points, to 27 percent, in terms of high developer interest during the same period.

Now, I'm not particularly bullish on Microsoft's chances of success, but there are elements of this survey that bother me. For one thing, the sample size strikes me as very small. I think you want a sample at least as big as the number of apps in the smallest marketplace.

The second problem is AppCelerator itself. I'm sure it's an excellent piece of kit (whatever it is), but since it can't actually be used to develop WP7 applications, I'm not sure why WP7 developers would go to their site and take the survey.

As a few readers have noted, Appcelerator’s tools do work on Windows PCs, but don’t seem to support Windows Phone on the mobile side. However, because Microsoft is recruiting heavily among Android and Apple developers for its phone platform, I still consider the survey results worth writing about.

Mmm. I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one, Mary Jo.

Hmm-- a lot fo the developers not developing for WP7 think WP7 is less important than the platforms they are developing for.  Imagine that.

Do you think perhaps Linux developers think Windows isn't that important?  

Do you think perhaps Java developers think .NET isn't that important?

Herbie

My main problem with the data is that, well, it doesn't say what it purports to say.

This is a survey taken among users of a specific app-development package that doesn't support WP7, as you say, that asks how interested they are in developing for WP7. It doesn't say anything about WP7 popularity or lack thereof. It's useful, if at all, for AppCelerator to determine how much of a market they have to adapt their product for WP7, not about developers in the wild.

What MJFoley is doing here is taking an existing but irrelevant data point and twisting it to create a headline: "Microsoft a distant third horse in the mobile race", even though the race itself is an irrelevant internal AppCelerator race.

I've spent the last two years as a tech journalist, so I know exactly what went on in their heads. In fact, I reported on that self-same survey a few months back, and took care to stress that these results are NOT indicative of WP7's success. Or lack thereof.

@Dr Herbie: Actually, in this case we're talking about devs using a cross-platform package, so your sample is picked out of a crowd of people already committed to cross-platform support, it's just the choice of supported platforms that's debated.

I think it's weird that MJ decided to write a story based solely on that report and not on more meaningful data like number of apps added to marketplaces per month, attachment rates and other such figures.

I also think we'll see a big increase in WP7 development once Verizon jumps on board and the Mango update is released.

MS also needs to change their marketing from marketing the ease of use to showing what you can do on the phone. That Qantas airlines app would be a great one to stick in a commercial.

Number of registered developers has seen a steady growth since launch. I'd hardly imagine developers are becoming less interested in the platform:

Number of apps in the marketplace has not only seen steady and strong growth since launch, but has been accelerating. I understand it reached 10,000 apps faster than android did in the same time frame:

Survey to actual WP7 developers: Do you know what is AppCelerator?

YES: 5%

No: 90%

Cookies: 5%