IDC and developer tools company Appcelerator conducted a survey of 2,363 developers during 2010, to ascertain their opinions of the mobile device market now and how they feel the industry will develop in the future. In the second of a two-part analysis, we look at the features and technologies that are crucial to the developer roadmap.

Facebook API of choice
Integration of mobile apps with Facebook was identified as a key priority, with 65 percent of respondents stating that this is something they already offer, or plan to implement “soon.” Facebook slightly outscores Twitter, which follows with 60 percent developer interest, and both are some way ahead of Foursquare, which trails with 22 percent.

According to IDC and Appcelerator, the two leading social APIs are being paired together in many applications being developed today. It was also noted that Facebook has a “strategic advantage” in that Facebook Connect can be used for identity as well as content sharing, whereas Twitter does not have its own identity system, and Foursquare allows for Facebook Connect to be used in place of its own.

iOS in-app purchases and PayPal payments are the two favoured methods of mobile commerce enablers, with 49 percent and 48 percent support, respectively. The report notes that PayPal is almost as popular as Google Checkout (33 percent) and Amazon (18 percent) combined, and is more popular than iOS in-app purchases in Europe and Asia.

Apple is also dominant in the mobile advertising race, with 52 percent of developers supporting iAds, compared to 36 percent for Google’s AdMob network. It was noted that developers favour Apple’s “richer ad units and higher click-through rates,” even as fill rates remain an issue. iAd and AdMob are “prioritised about five times higher than other mobile ad networks like Greystripe and Millennial,” with iAd also benefitting from being bundled with the iOS software development kit.

Native apps to lead over mobile web
Four-out-of-five developers say they prefer native applications to mobile Web applications, which was attributed to “user experience expectations” – 91 percent of respondents said that a native user interface is one of the most important features of an app. Support for a local database is more important than internet connectivity (81 percent and 72 percent, respectively), which the report says indicates that “smartphones and other connected devices are truly considered mini-computers by developers” and that the cloud, as important as it is to an “always-on” capability, is “only one part of the anywhere computing picture.”

Appcelerator and IDC also note that “push notifications were ranked higher than we might have expected,” coming third in the chart of desirable features with 74 percent developer support, slightly ahead of both internet connectivity (72 percent) and geo-location (69 percent). It was suggested that this “shows the increasing importance placed on real-time communication.”

Oracle lawsuit not harming Android; iOS licensing changes not affecting developer sentiment
Appcelerator and IDC found that 93 percent of respondents feel that Oracle’s legal action against Google with regard to the use of Java in Android has “little or no impact” on their enthusiasm for the platform. It was suggested that “Google and Oracle have too much collectively invested in Java’s success in Android and their individual futures in mobility to not settle the litigation.” It is widely believed that the case will be settled with “minimal to no” impact on anyone else. 

The survey also says that 83 percent of respondents believe that Apple’s easing of the iOS developer terms and conditions has had “little or no impact” on enthusiasm for iOS, stating that there has been “extremely high levels of developer enthusiasm of the past few months despite vagueness in terms of service changes in April.” IDC had stated that developers did not previously expect Apple to enforce most of the policies as initially written, “and indeed that was generally the case.”