Steve Ballmer might want to break out the checkbook and start an extra big “Developers, developers, developers!” chant. IDG News, via CITE World, reports on a new survey of more than 800 app developers showing that interest in making apps for the Windows Phone platform has actually declined since the beginning of the year. The survey, conducted by app development platform Appcelerator, showed that just 26% of developers surveyed said they were interested in making Windows Phone apps, down from 29% in the first quarter of 2013. For comparison, 80% of developers surveyed were interested in making apps for the iPhone and 71% said they were interested in making apps for Android phones.
Attracting app developers to Windows Phone has been a challenge for Microsoft, which has often resorted to simply paying off app developers to bring their apps over to its platform. Even these incentives haven’t been enough to get Microsoft caught up, however — a study conducted last month showed that Microsoft only has 63 of the 100 most important apps in Apple’s App Store while Android has 95 of the top 100. The bigger issue, however, is that even if Microsoft gets caught up with today’s hottest apps, there’s no guarantee that it will get tomorrow’s hottest apps. From this perspective, the company will really need to grow out market share over the next year to build sustainable developer interest.
