News

Wireless Developers: “We Need Better Tools!”

• By Jamison Cush
• October 4, 2005

A lack of quality tools is stifling wireless developers, according to a new study released by Evans Data. The survey of more than 500 programmers reported a large disparity between tool importance and satisfaction.

Testing and debugging tools presented the greatest gap with 78 percent of developers claiming they were extremely or very important. However, only 34 percent rated them excellent or very good.

Similar results were found with wireless emulation tools. Sixty-three percent said they were extremely or very important, while only 28 percent expressed satisfaction with the current industry offerings.

"Wireless developers see a lot of room for improvement in their tools, and it's a message that tool makers should heed in order to accelerate and enhance wireless application development and deployment," says John Andrews, Evans Data's COO. "The state of tools in wireless development represents a big opportunity for any vendor willing to step up, develop a killer tool set and take over the space."

Other findings from the Evans Data Fall 2005 Wireless Development Survey include:

• Smart phones are now the fourth most likely wireless device to be deployed, tying them with mobile phones
• Windows Server 2003 remains most popular among wireless developers for hosting and deploying server-side applications—Linux is a close second
• Sixty-six percent of wireless developers pursue Java in some way
• Fifty-two percent of wireless developers use open source or Linux in development