Wireless Developers Dish out Poor Grades on Quality of Development Tools in Latest Evans Data Study

Business Wire, April 11, 2006

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- The glaring difference between importance and quality of development tools became even more apparent in Evans Data Corporation's Spring 2006 Wireless Development Survey. The most important tools category, testing and debugging, were rated as "Extremely" and/or "Very Important" by 80% of wireless developers. Conversely, developer satisfaction for this same category rated only "Excellent" at 12% and "Very Good" at 31%. This same type of gap between importance and satisfaction is also evident across eight other tool categories which are deemed important.

"Because wireless development is increasing in its importance, as evidenced with greater time and dollars being spent overall, the expectations of the developer community is significant," said John Andrews, Evans Data's President and COO. "These expectations present a tremendous opportunity for tools providers to advance the maturity of these solution sets and take market share in this rapidly growing segment."

In other findings from the April 2006 survey of over 500 wireless developers:

--87% of respondents have made the move to extend mission-critical applications to mobile devices (up sharply from 75% only six months ago). Slowly but surely, the move is taking place. Approximately 26% of respondents now have extended more than half of their mission critical applications, up from 21% six months ago.

--Consequently, of all types of applications being written for wireless devices, authentication applications take precedence, underscoring the importance of security.

--Usage of J2ME is at an all-time high. Approximately 52% of respondents are currently working with Java ME -- which has recently undergone a name change -- compared to 46% six months ago, a 13% increase in growth. At the same time, evaluation numbers remain healthy: another 16% are still evaluating it.

About Evans Data Corporation

Evans Data Corporation (www.evansdata.com) provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects. Evans Data has recently announced their Development Products Conference to be held June 15 and 16 in San Jose, CA (www.evansdata.com/dpc/index.php)

Copyright(C) 2006 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.