A “noticeable erosion” of developer interest in Android during the last year seems to have been arrested, according to a survey from tools provider Appcelerator and research house IDC.

It was suggested that the growth in Android device shipments – especially smartphones – and more affordable price points are outweighing a steady increase in Android ecosystem fragmentation and monetisation challenges.

The number of developers “very interested” in writing for Android smartphones is 78.1 percent, down slightly from 78.6 percent in the first quarter of 2012. And there has been a slight uplift in interest in Android tablets, to 68.8 percent from 65.9 percent.

Among the recent developments noted by Appcelerator and IDC were the Kindle Fire’s demonstration of a market opportunity for lower priced and smaller tablets; and the integration of Android Market into Google Play, which “can provide network effects analogous to Apple’s iTunes and App Store”.

Continued cloud interest
The pair said that mobile developers “remain strongly committed to the cloud”. The poll found that 83 percent of all developers plan to use cloud services, a percentage “essentially identical” to the second quarter of 2011, when 84 percent reported the same.

Apple and Amazon’s cloud platform are top of developers’ plans, with Microsoft’s Azure trailing with “only tepid interest”. Some 50.4 percent plan to work with iCloud, and 49.1 percent with Amazon, but only 18.6 percent are planning to support Azure.

Push notifications, social integration, and authentication are the top three planned uses for cloud services. Appcelerator and IDC said that “these relatively simple uses of the cloud by mobile developers highlight how nascent the mobile cloud still is as of Q2 2012”.

The appeal of cloud integration includes the ability to develop backend, server-side capabilities, particularly for client-focused developers; the complexity of the connections a “modern mobile app” requires; and the wide availability of compelling services such as push notification.

Changing times create challenges
As always, the survey found some challenges for developers. It was noted that due to rapidly shifting environments, the popularity of some client-side platforms over others, and “highly disparate methodologies (languages, SDK, code bases) of client-side development”, there are still issues for “even the most seasoned developers”.

In addition to shifts in the OS mix, with Microsoft’s evolving platform strategy and the decline of RIM, it was noted that 51 percent of developers are struggling with the variety of devices – tablets, smartphones, smart TVs – they need to support.

According to Appcelerator and IDC, 66 percent of mobile app developers use multiple platform development tools to build apps. The primary motivation is “the sheer number of mobile operating systems that a mobile app must address and the fragmentation of those individual OSes”.