Hosted Call Center Featured Article

Open Source Platforms Drive Mobile Innovation: Black Duck Software

By Rajani Baburajan
TMCnet Contributor

Android  is leading the mobile open source development platform, but Apple iOS  is still in the race, according to Black Duck Software, a provider of products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software.Black Duck KnowledgeBase analyzed data from 9,000 mobile, free and open source software (FOSS) projects.

“Mobile software has the full and focused attention of commercial and FOSS development communities,” said Peter Vescuso, executive vice president, Black Duck Software (News - Alert), in a statement.

“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,” Vescuso added.

About 55 percent of the 3,800 new mobile projects began in 2010 are using the Android open source platform.

Apple's (News - Alert) iOS is second with 39 percent, while Windows, Palm and Symbian have two percent or less of new projects and MeeGo has only a handful share. FOSS developers support the most popular platforms, regardless of their openness.The number of FOSS mobile projects in 2010 doubled from the previous year. The increase is due to the increased popularity of FOSS for mobile and the explosion of FOSS projects for mobile apps and games.

“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.

Recently, Gartner (News - Alert) said the global mobile operating system market will be dominated by Symbian and Android (News - Alert), as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014. What isn't so clear is whether Nokia's Symbian will still be the global leader, or whether Android will have overtaken it for the top spot.

Meanwhile, the recent strategic partnership announced by Nokia and Microsoft is likely to create a new global mobile ecosystem favoring Nokia (News - Alert) and offer tough competition to existing market leaders.