Microsoft is trying to woo Android developers by making it easier for them to learn Windows Phone 7 and port their apps over to Microsoft’s platform.
In a blog post yesterday, Jean-Christophe Cimetiere, senior technical evangelist/Interoperability at Microsoft, described a package that includes an Android to Windows Phone API mapping tool and a white paper guide for Android developers porting to Windows Phone 7.
Cimetiere says Microsoft is working on expanding the coverage of its API Mapping tool for both iOS and Android, and it’s hired the “App Guy” who crawls developer forums aggregating discussions from different locations to answer questions related to porting iOS and Android applications to Windows Phone. Of course, that’s only one guy, so developers are invited to share their questions and answers as well.
According to VisionMobile research, the developer mindshare is firmly flowing toward Android and iOS, with 67 percent of developers currently using Android and 59 percent using iOS.
But when measuring intent among platforms where developers plan to invest, Windows Phone 7 comes in second place after Android. Nokia announced back in February that it would adopt Windows Phone as its main smartphone strategy, dropping Symbian and letting go of MeeGo.
Not surprisingly, Symbian and Java ME are the platforms with the highest developer abandonment rates, with nearly 40 percent of developers currently using Symbian and 35 percent using Java ME planning to drop the platforms.
Filed Under: Devices
