The Windows Phone app market may still have some catching up to do but it looks like Steve Ballmer’s “developers” chant is finally starting to work its magic. Strategy Analytics has released a new survey of more than 1,600 mobile app developers that shows 32% of them plan to support Windows Phone next year. While this is still far below the percentages of developers who say they’ll support iOS (68%) and Android (84%) next year, it’s a marked improvement from the 16% of developers who supported Windows Phone in 2013.
“It seems that Windows Phone looks set to become the third ecosystem, as predicted by Elop in the infamous ‘burning platform’ memo,” says Strategy Analytics analyst David MacQueen. “In contrast, support for Symbian next year is slightly under 2% of our developer panel.”
BlackBerry fared less well in the survey and essentially remained in stasis with just over 10% of developers saying they’d support the platform next year. In fact, BlackBerry is even in danger of being eclipsed by Firefox OS for developer interest, as Strategy Analytics found that 10% of developers plan to support Mozilla’s open-source platform next year.
