About a year ago we started opening up for more platforms than just windows. How far are we now?
The most successful platform still remains windows, because 95% of all our apps are Windows only. But we expanded our development so that in the future 30% of our software will be multiplatform or specifically developed for other platforms.
Why would we develop for different platforms?
Each new platform brings a new opportunity, at least for te worthwhile ones. Mac OSX for example has already gained 10% of the computer market and Mac OSX users are not as cheap as Windows users and also don’t complain that often about details. So this brings a new group of users which are with a lot less, but who bring us the same amount of revenue we get from Windows.
Future Mac OSX applications will possibly be : 36-image express for mac, a scientific/economic calculator program for mac, an invoice wizard, … Other apps will be ported to java to support multiple OS’s.
That brings us to our second most successful platform at this time, the iPhone OS. With about 4.000 downloads, iDuelpro Mobile is our most successful cross-platform application. It still takes only 4% of the total amount of (i)Duelpro downloads, where the windows version Duelpro takes 95% and iDuelpro for mac takes 1%. This is great for a platform with less than 1% of marketshare, but the development for iPhone is also very expensive, so sooner or later iDuelpro Mobile will loose its 0$ price-tag or will disappear.
Linux development is something we attempted a year ago at the start of our ambition and maybe we will try this platform, but it seems useless and I don’t see any use in developing native for an operating system which is so diverse and only covers 0.8% of all users. As a surplus to get accepted in the linux community you have to make your software opensource, a philosophy we do not support as the software-industry is a profit industry and not a charity organization. Until Linux poses a real threat to the desktop marketshare of Win and Mac other than some Ubuntu official saying “This will be our year!” each year over and over again, we will not develop for a big mouthed midget operating system which gets enough chances but does not appeal to the public even with a 0$ price-tag.
So the conclusion is Windows dev still is a great success, Mac dev is a small success but will be more successful once we create more applications, iPhone dev is a relatively big success but is expensive and Linux dev will have to wait until Linux grows up (maybe some day? ).
Phix Software's Weblog 