Developers give their opinions on app markets [Charts]

As a flood of new tablets and smartphones hit the market this year, it will give consumers the power to make thoughtful choices, without having to cave for the one hot tablet/smartphone on the market. In saying that, this will be a great year for gadget-geek consumers. But what about the folks who create our apps? What gadgets are developers most excited to develop for?

In a recent report from Appcelerator and IDC, the firms reveal the results of surveys conducted this month with 2,235 developers, displaying their various opinions on OS platforms and their future mobile strategies and plans. Here are a few results from the survey:

Tablets

Considering the amount of Android tablets we saw this year at CES, you’d think this number would be higher but based on this report, in the last 4 months developers are 12 percent more interested in developing for Android tablets. And it’s the same case with RIM’s new BlackBerry Playbook which gained again, 12 percent since September.

Android Tablets

It appears that the developers surveyed felt that the biggest factor for Android tablets to succeed is price, coming in a 57 percent of the overall opinion. Following price, devs chose minimized fragmentation and hardware capabilities. And, only 33 percent believed that Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) was important.

Connected TV

Interest in development for social TV platforms took a dive, and according to the report developers are not as interested in creating apps for Apple TV or Google TV. From Sept of 2010 to today, the some two thousand devs in this report are 10 percent less excited about connected TV. After hearing Jobs talk about “amateur hour”referring to the app development on Apple TV, it may have turned devs off. And over the last few months, we’ve seen that Google TV can’t currently offer us as much as we’d thought (content!).

Native App Features

Within the native app feature ranking chart, we can see that geo-location and social features such as Facebook and Twitter on the rise. The biggest increase since last quarter is Google Maps which is up 18 percent, a feature that have become very common in mobile apps. Based on this chart it also shows developers seem to be prefer in-app and Paypal payments as opposed to iAds (down 10 percent).

Developing for Each Platform

In this chart, Android and iPhone smartphones take the lead in developer interest with the iPad and Android tablets following in 3rd and 4th place. Windows 7 phone is currently sitting between the BlackBerry and the Blackberry Playbook at 36 percent. Overall, the results of this chart are pretty bang on with what I’d guessed however, I wouldn’t have thought Blackberry would have ranked a bit lower for developers based on the the lack of quality apps I’ve seen in RIM’s app store. I’d love to hear your thoughts or comments, is this what you expected devs to say?