Developers shifting target from Windows

Fewer developers are making applications for Microsoft's Windows operating system, a survey has revealed.

According to analysts at the Evans Data Corporation research house, 64.8 percent of North American developers are writing software for Windows, down from 74 percent only a year ago. The decline in popularity of the world's most prevalent operating systems appears to coincide with the rise of Linux, as the number of developers targeting the open-source environment has gone up by three percentage points from 8.8 percent to 11.8 percent in the same year.

Evans Data also predicted in its spring 2007 North American Development Survey that the percentage of developers targeting Windows will fall by a further two points in the following year. John Andrews, president of Evans Data, said on Monday that a shift away from Windows began about two years ago.

"The data show that this migration is now accelerating," Andrew said. "Linux has benefited, but we also see corresponding growth in niche operating systems for non-traditional client devices," he said, adding that the development landscape was changing.

However, the survey demonstrated that there has been no fall in the "use of Windows on the development desktop" despite the drop in targeting. It also predicted that, although Javascript is by far the mostly widely used scripting language among North American developers, Ruby would see a 50 percent increase in popularity over the next year.

In other findings, it seems that a third of developers in North America are currently working with virtualisation, with more than 40 percent set to join them in the next year.

Microsoft was not available for comment at the time of writing.