Mobile App Development: 10 Key Facts on This Hot Market

Building mobile computing applications is among the hottest market segments for IT developers. The challenge from a channel provider's perspective is that a raft of competing methodologies for building those applications makes it difficult to determine what path to pursue. Given the numerous mobile and traditional desktop environments in need of support, a larger number of developers are relying more on HTML5, according to recent survey of 2,128 developers of business applications conducted by Sencha, a provider of application development tools optimized for HTML5. The survey finds that most developers are supporting, on average, somewhere between four and five platforms. The traditional Windows desktop is still the most popular platform, followed by Google's Android and the Apple iPhone and iPad. At the rear is MacOS. However, even with its popularity, Windows is not receiving support from 30 percent of the developers surveyed. The study makes plain that, despite efforts by Microsoft and Google to entice developers to support other languages, JavaScript remains the dominant language for building mobile computing apps. Here are 10 key mobile app trends highlighted in the study.