| By Ian Thain |
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| March 24, 2009 10:00 PM EDT |
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Web Development and SDK Development each offer distinct advantages to the iPhone Developer. One uses your favorite web-based language, HTML, Custom Style Sheets and JavaScript for the Safari Browser on the iPhone. The other to run native Objective-C applications on the device, written with Apple's Development tools suite headed by XCode.
At a high level, Web Developers benefit from ease of simple development, deployment and updating speed, where SDK Developers benefit from integration with the iPhone core device features and native speed that allows the creation of complex solutions.
So I set out over the last two months, with the aid of the LinkedIn Polls feature to gauge the trend and here's my result
As I mentioned already, each way of developing has advantages, so the figure of 47% for those quite rightly airing on the side of caution and taking the conservative view of 'it depends' is no surprise. What is more telling is the figure of 40% of developers polled that think the iPhone Software Developer Kit is the best way to develop.
When you break down Apple's latest figures from last week, that state over 800,000 downloads of the SDK & 50,000 companies & individuals who have joined the Apple iPhone Developer Program (62% whom have never developed for Apple before), it shows a wave that is ever increasing. Now with the announcement of the SDK & OS for 3.0 containing 1000 new API's for developers that follow SDK development, I believe the SDK route has cemented itself as the #1 way for innovative and exciting application development.
On top of these facts, the figures of over 25,000 Applications submitted to the iTunes App Store and 800,000 downloads of those...which is more likely over 1M now, must be very compelling to developers.
As one of the Sybase Technical Evangelists, Ian regularly addresses technical audiences all over the world and his sessions are always very well attended. He also writes education classes, whitepapers, demos and articles for various Sybase products and publishes regularly in Journals such as SYS-CON's PBDJ and International Developer Magazine. He is also the Sybase Unwired Platform & PocketBuilder Evangelist and works closely with the team in Dublin, CA and Concord, MA on new features and demonstrations for the products. He is also Tech Chair of iPhone Development Summit 2009 - New York (June) and San Francisco (November). In his customer-facing Evangelist role, Ian is very involved with the design, production and testing of Enterprise class Unwired Solutions, that have been implemented using Sybase's Unwired tools for Sybase customers around the globe. In addition, Ian is a dedicated technical expert continually working with Sybase's key partners and clients to enhance the capabilities of the Unwired solutions that Sybase can offer to its customers. Ian can also be found on Twitter @ithain
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