Mobile Innovation, Growth Driven by Open Source, According to Data from Black Duck Software KnowledgeBase

A 44% increase in mobile projects shows Apple iOS developers trailing Android - by a slim margin

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Mar 02, 2011, 10:06 ET

WALTHAM, Mass., March 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Duck Software, the leading global provider of products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software, today announced trends in mobile open source development platform choices that show Android leading the pack but Apple iOS still in the game.

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Analyzing data from the almost 9,000 mobile free and open source software (FOSS) projects contained in the Black Duck KnowledgeBase, Black Duck found that of 3,800 new mobile projects started in 2010, the open-source Android leads as the platform of choice with 55 percent of the total. Apple's iOS is a close second with 39 percent, and other platforms had a 2 percent or lower share of new projects. While Android is open, iOS is not, indicating that FOSS developers support the most popular platforms, regardless of their openness. Beyond the two leading platforms, Windows, Palm and Symbian have two percent or less of new projects and MeeGo has only a handful.

The number of FOSS mobile projects started in 2010 doubled from the previous year. The increase is attributable to the increased popularity of FOSS for mobile and the explosion of FOSS projects for mobile apps and games (particularly in Android, but for iOS as well.)

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"Mobile software has the full and focused attention of commercial and FOSS development communities," said Peter Vescuso, Executive Vice President, Black Duck Software. "As mobile apps displace desktop applications and mobile devices displace laptops and desktops we expect to see broad commercial developer interest in the top mobile development platforms, as well as consolidation in the number of platforms that draw developer support."

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Not all new FOSS mobile projects are developed for a specific platform, and some, but not all, are written for multiple platforms. While many mobile projects have large code bases (e.g., Android), a distinct trend in the 2010 results was the growth of apps, particularly smaller custom applications. Examples include a number of transit-related (bus, train) projects from around the world (Sri Lanka, Trondheim Norway, Germany, Spanish Railways), and the US (Seattle, Lafayette Louisiana, Massachusetts (MassRoute)). In addition, projects created for single events are on the increase, e.g. an application in support of an Agile Development conference in Italy https://github.com/iliasbartolini/AgileDayConferenceApp. These and other small projects are made possible by the rapid development environments of top mobile platforms.

Many of 2010's new mobile projects did not declare a license. Of those that did, the most popular were the GPL (all versions), MIT, Apache, BSD and Microsoft.

"Black Duck's latest metrics concerning open source traction in mobile development confirm the importance of market opportunity for developer traction," said Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst at RedMonk. "In concentrating on the Android and iOS platforms, developers are advantaging two differentiated platforms. While Android may be open source and iOS closed, they are both volume platforms, which indicates that developer pragmatism is alive and well."

For more information about Black Duck Software please visit www.blackducksoftware.com. For open source project and license information and trends, visit the Black Duck Open Source Resource Center.

About Black Duck Software

Black Duck Software is the leading provider of products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software, at enterprise scale, in a multi-source development process. Black Duck™ enables companies to shorten time-to-solution and reduce development costs while mitigating the management, compliance and security challenges associated with open source software. Black Duck Software powers Koders.com, the industry's leading code search engine for open source, and Ohloh.net, the largest free public directory of open source software and a vibrant web community of free and open source software developers and users. Black Duck is among the 400 largest software companies in the world, according to Softwaremag.com. The company is headquartered near Boston and has offices in San Mateo, California, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing. For more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

Black Duck®, Know Your Code®, Ohloh®, SpikeSource®, Spike®, and the Black Duck logo are registered trademarks of Black Duck Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Koders™ is a trademark of Black Duck Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

SOURCE Black Duck Software