Friday, 6 July 2007

Windows Platform No Longer Developers Favourite

Microsoft's Windows platform is no longer the favourite of application developers in the US, a new survey by Evans Data says.

Evans Data surveyed about 400 developers and IT managers in North America and found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 per cent from a year ago. Just 64.8 per cent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 per cent in 2006.

“If we look back over the 10 year trend we’ve been tracking on OS targeting,” said John Andrews, President and CEO of Evans Data, “it’s clear that a shift away from Windows began about two years ago, and the data shows that this migration is now accelerating. Linux has benefited, but we also see corresponding growth in niche operating systems for non-traditional client devices. The landscape is changing.”

Other findings from the survey include:

· Javascript is the most widely used scripting language - with more than three times the users of PHP, Ruby, or Python, but use of Ruby is expected to increase by 50% within the coming year.

· Though targeting is dropping, use of Windows on the development desktop remains steady.

· A third of North American developers are currently working with virtualization, and 42.5% expect to be adopting this within the next year.

Andrews said the decline of Microsoft has been more so due to the increasing popularity of Linux and different Linux platforms. “Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now," said Andrews.

The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. "I think Vista probably offset some of the decline," Andrews said.

The share for Windows is expected to drop another 2 per cent, to about 63 per cent, in the next year, Andrews said.