App Developers Continue To Choose iOS As Their Top Priority, Reveals Forrester

According to a new report from research firm Forrester, mobile app developers continue to choose Apple’s iOS as their first priority platform, despite Google’s Android being the current smartphone market leader, TechCrunch is reporting. The research company drew data during Q1 2013 from its Forrsights Developer Survey, which polled more than 1,600 software developers from North America and Europe.

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It seems that 35% of respondents target iPhone as their first priority device, while 27% target Android phones first. The source highlights that “better app monetization” on iOS is typically cited as the reason developers choose to go Apple first. Also, developing on Android typically requires more resources due to high levels of diversity on both the OS and devices side, resulting in a greater number of OS versions and screen sizes to support.

Despite iOS getting this first app mover advantage, more developers target Android phones overall than target iPhones (84% rank Android phones as a priority vs 77% for iPhones). This is to be expected, with Android being on so many smartphones at multiple price-points vs Apple’s limited iPhone portfolio. However the iPad does help to expand Apple’s developer mojo, with 27% of respondents ranking the iPad as their second priority device vs around a fifth putting the same level of importance on Android tablets. By contrast Windows RT tablets are being largely ignored by developers, according to Forrester’s data.

At the same time, Forrester’s report also points out that more developers are now splitting their time between native app development and HTML5 i.e spending less time developing native iOS or Android apps and more time building mobile web apps or hybrid apps with web view components.

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