Europe
: The number of developers currently using the J2ME platform for wireless
development has risen to a new high, according to the Fall 2004 Wireless
Development Survey by Evans Data Corporation. Forty percent currently
use the standard with another 24% evaluating J2ME for future use.
The primary consideration in choosing a target platform to develop
for is the application runtime environment, selected by 27% of survey
respondents followed by the physical device, OS and popularity of
the device.
In other
findings, 30% of developers constructing phones felt improvements
to software applications and the resulting increase in efficiency
could most reduce development costs, 17% felt that optimizing the
platform and operating system were the best means for reducing construction
costs.
"J2ME's
growth can be directly attributed to wide-spread adoption of J2ME-capable
devices in the consumer marketplace, increasing the demand for custom
software. As this market grows, it follows naturally that more developers
will create applications targeting this growing audience," said
Jason Kaczor, Evans' wireless analyst. "Another reason for J2ME's
surge - it's more cost effective to develop J2ME-compliant code once,
than to customize or re-write code for differing devices and operating
systems."
Other
findings from the August 2004 survey of more than 450 wireless developers:
Developers'
plans for user-initiated applications on the Java platform that allow
end users to download, install and execute new applications, are already
well underway with forty percent currently building them and another
19% planning them for the next year.
The three
most likely security mechanisms for wireless applications are: Public
key infrastructure with 15%, SSL/TLS connections with 12% and User
authentication/password protection with 11%.
Testing
and debugging tools are the second most important tool in the wireless
developers’ arsenal with 76% saying they are "extremely
important" or "very important". But they are the second
most unsatisfactory type of tool with almost a quarter indicating
that they need work.
About
Evans Data Corporation
Evans
Data Corporation (www.evansdata.com) provides regularly updated IT
industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global
developer population.