Michael Dolan Dot Com

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

InfoWorld: Windows loses ground with North America developers

No wonder Redmond is funding so many developer Linux ads these days… InfoWorld has an article on this news. 

A survey this spring of more than 400 developers and IT managers in North America found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 percent from a year ago. Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006.

“We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions]. Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now,” said John Andrews, the CEO of Evans Data.

The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. “I think Vista probably offset some of the decline,” Andrews said.

The share for Windows is expected to drop another 2 percent, to about 63 percent, in the next year, Andrews said.