Game developers love iOS and Android, but WP surprises
Mobile gaming is huge business and it's no longer just in the hands of Nintendo and Sony. Smartphones have brought mobile gaming to everyone, and a new survey is showing just where developers want to target their efforts. Not surprisingly, developers are overwhelmingly choosing to work on the iOS and Android platforms, but Windows Phone is making a pretty solid showing itself.
The survey is courtesy of Game Developer magazine and as you might expect nearly all (94.6%) of the developers questioned are working on or have games for iOS. Although, an interesting note for iOS is that only 30.7% of developers were building for iOS 5, with 39.4% targeting iOS 4.1+, 16.5% aiming for 4.0+, and 13.4% developing for version 3.0+. Perhaps iOS isn't as unified a platform as Apple wants us to believe?
Android comes in second with 70.7% of developers working on the platform, and it's hard to say exactly why the number would be that low. It could be partially that app revenue can be lower with Android, or it could be the difficulties associated with supporting such a vast ecosystem of devices, or it may just be a matter of marketing. Apple markets its products better than Android, and Apple has the brand recognition among casual users.
The big surprise for us was actually with Windows Phone, where 8.8% of developers said they were working on the platform. Given that WP7 holds less than 2% market share in the US, and only around 6% worldwide, that's not such a bad number. Microsoft has obviously been pushing hard to get developers to work on the platform, and it seems to be working.
BlackBerry (2.7%), Symbian (2%), and bada (1.4%) round out the survey, but none garners any real interest among developers.
source: Gamasutra
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