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2010 is hurtling toward its end, and it’s always good to take the pulse of the mobile applications industry.
This is especially apt considering mobile poses the greatest growth potential of any app sector, when combined with local and social apps.
Millennial Media, that intrepid standalone ad shop that did not sell out to Google, Apple, Microsoft or Yahoo (give it time), has posted interesting stats about what platforms developers are writing apps for (or aren’t).
Check out the results, which come from an informal October survey of 500 developers, publishers and advertisers:
Millennial has Apple iOS leading, with Android right behind it. Yep, that dovetails with the latest stats from NPD Group, Canalys, Nielsen and comScore.
But while those shops all concur RIM is still the U.S. smartphone market share leader, I call your attention to the fact that RIM is No. 4 behind Apple’s iPad on this mobile platform list.
Since apps are what is prompting millions of users to purchase iPhones, iPads and Android devices in 2010, that doesn’t bode well for RIM.
In fact, it merely underscores that RIM is a stagnant platform. Indeed, just as in 2010, 12 percent of apps platform publishers said they plan to support RIM in 2011. No growth there.
2010 was the year of the iPhone, but 2011 is apparently the year of Android development, according to Millennial:
Some 29 percent of publishers said they are doubling down on Android, compared to only 8 percent who plan to target the iPhone. Does that mean the core apps for the iPhone have already been built?
No worry, iOS will get love in 2011 via the iPad, which tied Windows Phone 7 with 20 percent of publishers supporting those two platforms.
This is all consistent with what I’ve been seeing for awhile: that Android and Apple will comprise a two-horse race at the top in 2011, with Windows Phone 7 catching fire later in the year.