VisionMobile: Developer Status 2016 Q1 (ii) Platform status

VisionMobile published the report in 2016.3.29 with the state of the Defeloper Nation Q1 2016, the following is the translation of the report. Platform Status

In the professional developer community, half of the target machines are desktops, including Web apps for desktop users, and showing the old computing paradigm is still the most important.

Other areas, such as mobility, the Internet of things, and the cloud, may receive more media attention and headlines, but low-key desktops are still the most used by computer users at work, so it's not surprising that many career developers are still involved in creating desktop apps. Today, the desktop is usually a notebook, but even if the nickname is misplaced, few laptops (laptop) are used on laptops (lap), and Microsoft spends a lot of time using surface series to eliminate the difference between tablet and desktop computers. But desktop computing is still an independent area and a field in which our developer community is deeply involved.

These developers are not necessarily targeting traditional desktop platforms, and 44% of them create apps that run in Web browsers, so they work in all popular operating systems. Apps running in the browser get cross-platform features provided by Web technology, and allow developers to use common skills and high-level scripting languages. Web applications can be happily combined with content through other technologies. It is easy to connect to cloud services and even provide a foothold in the mobile market, as mobile browsers can be comparable to desktop browsers for functionality and compatibility.

The cost of web development is performance and access to local resources, such as storage and input devices. The web community has gone a long way in addressing these issues, providing HTML5 Web Storage as the first step towards persistence, WebGL for fast images, and WEBRT for camera and microphone access. With these tools, Web developers can create high-performance applications that can work on any desktop platform and most mobile platforms.

windows is still a natural choice for developers

Developers who are not lured by Web technology need to access features that are only available from native apps, or that require performance that only native apps can achieve, Windows remains the platform of choice. 39% of professionals working on the desktop write Windows code , albeit in the traditional and modern versions of the Microsoft platform.

Despite the success of the Apple Laptop series, OS x still accounts for a small share. Although Apple accounted for 7.68% of the desktop OS market in January 2016, according to net marketshare data, only 4% of the professional desktop developers targeted it, and many developers were using web technology to address the access of OS X audiences, Ensure compatibility with mainstream platform windows and provide support for a few other platforms (Linux, etc.).

Linux is performing well and is the preferred platform for 9% of professional desktop developers, and interestingly, this group is not a volunteer contributor to large projects, but rather employed to create commercial applications. Linux is popular in servers, but the share in desktop computing is very small (Net marketshare data is 1.71%), so the interest of professional developers is hard to understand. The analysis tools market has significant Linux status, many of which are running on Linux, some of which are involved in the development of these tools, and when we still need to dig deeper into the data, why Linux attracts professional developers.

Other desktop platforms are more important than Google Chrome OS, which is targeted by 2% of desktop Professional developers. This number is significant, especially as these developers use Chrome OS as their "premier" platform. Google's light platform has a certain place in the school, can use the old hardware (portable) to install the release version of Chrome OS, so there are some development in this area, but it is also a good attempt, developers trying to explore the platform, behind Google's weight support.

It is worth mentioning that the use of the Chroms OS compared to the previous survey, the number has not increased, that is, some core professional developers to Chrome OS target, but this group has not increased in the past six months. the movement of the competition is only two left

Mobile developers have little interest in browsers, with only 9% of them being the primary platform. Today, mobile browsers are powerful, but integration with device hardware is important for mobile phones and is still not being addressed by standards, which is the way the desktop solves it.

Web Standard extensions allow browser apps to access microphones, cameras, and location hardware, such as GPS, but mobile devices also have fingerprint readers, electronic compasses, barometers, gyroscopes, and a variety of specific hardware that enable devices to respond to a wide variety of environments. Web standards do not support access to these hardware and limit the functionality of browser-based applications.

In addition to hardware, mobile users want mobile apps to work smoothly with each other. Mobile apps can trigger each other and pass information to each other, but this can become complicated if you're using browser-based apps.

Some mobile platforms, especially the Firefox OS, are already looking to expand Web standards to encompass these features, and the idea goes back to Plam's webOS and earlier (OMTP's fated Bonda), but no significant support, and market leaders, Google and Apple have little incentive to extend the browser feature set.

whether it's a device shipment or a developer's psychological share, Apple and Google are clearly the market leaders. Android is the target of 41% of professional mobile developers, and 39% is the preferred platform for iOS . However, it is not intuitive to see Android and iOS as the same level, the market share is clearly dominated by andriod, reflecting a more lucrative revenue from the iOS ecosystem.

IDC data shows that Android accounted for 83% of global handset shipments in the second quarter of 2015, while iOS was only 14%. Other market-tracking companies give similar statistics. Obviously, Android is a lot more than iOS devices. To understand this, we need to see where the mobile developer is and how to get revenue.

Android sales are growing mainly in developing markets and extremely low-end handsets. At the time of writing this report, less than $ (or £ 35) would be able to buy a working Android phone without subsidies or carrier bundling. Ttsims M5 Smart is a good smart phone that shows how to leverage commercially available hardware and compromise on screen size and resolution to reduce hardware prices. Indian companies have also tried other sources of subsidies, such as government-funded distributed education software, to give equipment to people who are not yet networked.

Android users who purchase a mobile phone with £ 35 will not be interested in the price for £4.99 (the most popular game is the current price of Minecraft). They are also less interested in advertising, which is the owner of most Android apps on the Play Store: users of £35 phones may need to subsidize the purchase of mobile phones with little disposable income, so the ad value is low.

On the contrary, Apple's iphone, the minimum configuration (5S,16MB, the time the report was written), was priced at £330 ($470). It is clear that users with such devices will not be deterred by a few dollars in app purchases or in-app purchases, and in the same way they attract advertisers because of their considerable disposable income.

The demographic differences of the user population explain why the professional mobile developer population is equally divided into two platforms, but it can tell us how differentiation changes over time. Android's market share will become increasingly important, and developing economies will attract more developers.

In many markets, Android will become the default platform, and Apple has the risk of becoming an edge role for iOS. Apple will play the role of a high-end brand, but once the Android dominance is established, the challenge becomes difficult. This will be a long process, but we expect to see a steady rise in the percentage of Android developers. The mind is in the clouds, but the cloud is in the office

In business cloud computing, Amazon's dominance cannot be overlooked, with recent high-profile endorsements, such as Netflix announcing that the company now has no internal servers, reinforcing Amazon's view of providing infrastructure in the information age. But our research shows once again that self-hosting is the most popular option for seeking to harness the benefits of cloud computing.

42% of professional cloud developers say that hosting their own cloud services, running servers in their own buildings or renting infrastructure (perhaps IASs provides virtualization), is an effective way to put together. These users tend to manage their own platform, both because of the need to ensure the compatibility of the original system, but also for the maintenance of the underlying software control.

IaaS is the easiest way to get the benefits of cloud computing, and it's easy to explain and measure the benefits of simply putting existing installations into the cloud-provided infrastructure. Management is able to understand the cost savings of co-existence hardware and the lowest damage to existing systems.

The problem is that IaaS does not deliver all the benefits of cloud computing, and once a company invests in a self-hosted cloud, moving to a commercial platform (PaaS) is two investments, which is hard to justify.

Not all commercial cloud platforms lack customers. 22% of Professional cloud developers use Amazon, twice times the closest competitor (Google), while Google is competing with Microsoft Azure for the second place.

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