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Uno Platform Survey: Windows Usurps Android as Most Important Target
Uno Platform, a close Microsoft partner that cooperates with Redmond on developer tooling, published a community survey that, among other things, finds Windows has supplanted Android as the most important target for developers.
The company offers a namesake, open source dev platform that "allows for creating pixel-perfect, single-source C# and XAML apps that run natively on Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, and Web via WebAssembly," while featuring Figma integration for design-development handoff and extensions to bootstrap projects.
It earlier this month published results from a survey of 220 community developers.
[Click on image for larger view.] Platforms that Apps Need to Run On (source: Uno Platform).
A key takeaway from the survey, the company said, is that "Windows as a target platform has gained importance at 'the expense' of macOS and Linux. Also, it took over Android as the most important target platform."
In describing the most important targets for cross-platform development, the company examined year-over-year patterns and found the same top three platforms were listed, though with some changes in popularity:
- Windows: 77 percent in 2022 vs. 67 percent in 2021
- Android: 72 percent vs. 69 percent in 2021
- Web: 64 percent in both 2022 and 2021
"It is also worth noting that macOS dropped from 36 percent to 28 percent, and Linux dropped from 31 percent to 26 percent year-over-year when looking at the 'must run on' platforms," the company said. "Coincidentally this drop seems to correspond with the spike Windows received."
In mobile-specific results, Android rose from 69 percent to 72 percent in 2022, while iOS dipped slightly from 58 percent to 57 percent in 2022, a 15 percent difference in Android's favor, though Uno Platform noted that this year's survey question differed from last year's, "so we take these results lightly."
Other results from the survey unsurprisingly found that the top IDEs were Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac and Visual Studio Code, with the top non-Microsoft IDE being Rider from JetBrains.
[Click on image for larger view.] Top IDEs If Restricted to One (source: Uno Platform).
"The #2 spot for VS Code claim was further confirmed by asking developers to hypothetically chose ONLY ONE IDE they could use for their development," the company said. "We introduced this hypothetical question in 2022 to see preferences. Looking at the results below, a portion of Visual Studio developers (Windows and Mac) could be willing to use VS Code as their only tool if it had some additional IDE-like features they needed."
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David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.