Horizons

Apple Tablet already a favorite among developers

A recent survey shows that the overwhelming majority of developers are keen on working with the forthcoming Apple Tablet. That's good news for Apple, good news for the Tablet, and good news for you.

Kimberly White/Reuters/File

Apple CEO Steve Jobs smiles at the 2009 Apple Worldwide Developers' Conference on June 20 in San Francisco.

Newscom

Developers are already lining up to work with the Apple Tablet. Of course, the Apple Tablet doesn't even exist yet, but don't tell that to the developers.

By Matthew Shaer

Jan. 27, 2010, 9:56 a.m. ET

The success of the Apple Tablet – or the iTablet or the Apple Canvas, depending on which blog you're reading – will likely have nothing to do with hardware. The Tablet won't rise or fall exclusively on the basis of its durability, or even the resolution of its touch-screen. What matters is the applications: the quality and quantity of the downloadable programs created for the Apple Tablet by third-party developers. (When is the Apple tablet announcement? Check out our liveblog list here.)

So if you're looking for a prediction of how the Tablet will fare, you need look no further than a new report from Appcelerator, an app development company based in California. In a survey of 554 developers, 90 percent of developers said they were "very interested" in building for the forthcoming Apple Tablet. Doesn't sound particularly surprising at first. After all, the iPhone is a favorite platform for developers. Why not the Tablet?

But as Appcelerator points out, the developers surveyed came from a diverse background. Folks who traditionally build for Android were surveyed; so were PC and Linux specialists. In addition, the pool of developers spilled across the globe, with 52 percent in North America, 33 percent in Europe, and 15 percent elsewhere. In other words, to judge by the Appcelerator survey, Apple will have a wide range of developers throwing their hats into the Tablet ring.

"I think there will be a lot of frenzy over the tablet, a lot of experimentation by developers," Scott Schwarzhoff, the head of marketing at Appcelerator, told Computerworld. Again, that bodes very well for the Apple Tablet. In today's mobile device market, it's the apps that really matter. Anyone can make a netbook with a couple cool features. Only a few systems will allow users access to a swirling, vibrant world of third-party content.

Check out the device's specs and our iPad topic page.

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