Apple Devs Ready For Display Boost Says Piper Jaffray
This past week at WWDC 2012, Apple's big developer conference for the year, analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray polled 100 developers on what they thought about a possible larger display in the iPhone 5. This discussion was expanded with talk of a possible iPad Mini, this expanding the number of displays that an iOS developer would potentially have to create apps for to 4 or more, this one heck of a lot more than ever before for Apple's mobile operating system.
It appears that on average, the iOS developer says that difficulty moving to an environment with more display sizes would be a 3.4 out of 10. This result suggests, of course, that a larger display for the iPhone and a smaller display for the iPad would be a definite possibility if this was all Apple was considering for said devices. Munster wrote a note to investors saying:
"Given the relative ease expected by developers for utilizing potential new iOS screen sizes, we believe the introduction of new screen sizes would not affect the success or availability of the apps on iOS." – Munster
This news comes in addition to poll results with the same set of developers that had over half of them (more than 50, that is,) saying they also developed for Android devices at the same time as they did for iOS. This same query resulted in a 47 percent confirmation of double-developing in 2011. Of course for platforms like Windows Phone with 14 percent and BlackBerry with 9 percent, the results don't shine so positively. BlackBerry in particular went down 36 percent from last year with iOS developers, this showing quite clearly that the other platforms have proven themselves much more worthy.
These results show a couple of things:
• Apple essentially has the go-ahead from developers to bring on a new screen size for devices on iOS.
• Developers in general are willing to create applications for multiple platforms – just so long as they're not tanking as BlackBerry has.
• In general, screen size does not appear to be an issue for developers.
We'll see how these bits play out over the next few months as BlackBerry continues to struggle, Android and iOS continue to grow, and the mobile world continues to be the wild west of software development. Check the timeline below to see more info on the next Apple mobile operating system version: iOS 6.
[via PCMag]