Survey sez!

We are deep into two WP7 dev surveys, but I just love this stuff and so I'm going to leak some preliminary data out now – if you want me to send you a link to the final results, send me an email at sebastian at preemptive dot com.

The first survey we are doing goes back to the earliest group of WP7 developers, “first 300,” and asks how they have made out over the past two months.

The second survey targets roughly another 1,500 active wp7 devs who are using analytics and/or obfuscation but who began their work after the initial survey.

Here are a few tidbits that we see so far…

Analytics improves mobile development practices and app value

Going back to the original 300 and asking those who had deployed apps with analytics, we have found that:

• 82% of the devs say that using Runtime Intelligence (RI) has “helped them to establish for themselves the value of analytics for app development overall”

With regards to their specific WP7 app in the marketplace, the devs directly credited their use of RI as:

• Increasing the value of their app (45%)
• Improving their app’s user experience (36%)
• Improving their app's quality (27%)

Mobile app devs migrating to WP7 4X’s faster than .NET devs

In the first 300, only 4% of the registered developers targeted two or more additional mobile platforms. This indicated to me at least that the very first developers to develop for WP7 were already MSFT devotees versus serious mobile app developers exploring WP7 as an alternative/incremental mobile platform.

However, in the latest wave of developers, that stat has more than quadrupled. There is no question that developers who identify themselves as mobile app developers first rather than iOS, .NET, or Android developers are building for WP7.

Platform share for those developers targeting multiple mobile platforms are (in addition to WP7):

• iOS 69%
• Android 67%
• RIM 23%
• Symbian 5%

There’s a lot more to come – so stay tuned (or shoot me an email). Cheers!