One of the companies that is making big waves in the cross-platform mobile development game is Appcelerator. Appcelerator's Titanium platform is a free Apache 2-licensed, cross-platform toolkit that lets web developers use JavaScript, CSS, HTML and scripting languages like Ruby or Python to build native apps for the iPhone, Android and the iPad.
As of today, more than 65,000 developers have signed up to use Titanium and more than 4,000 Titanium-built applications are in the iPhone App Store or Android Market.
We spoke with Scott Schwarzhoff, Appcelerator's VP of Marketing, about Titanium's growth, some of the apps that are built on Titanium and where developer trends are heading.
Titanium's growth is relatively phenomenal. This past March, when general availability of the platform was first made public, 500 applications were created and submitted to the various paid marketplaces. Right now, Appcelerator says that more than 1,000 new applications are now deployed per month.
Schwarzhoff told us that Appcelerator expects to have 10,000 applications in the app marketplaces by the end of 2010.
Appcelerator has released a showcase of native applications created in Titanium. The apps run the spectrum, from local deal apps like Scoutmob, avatar creation apps like MTV's Jersey Shore Yourself and to social checkin apps like GetGlue for iPhone and Android.
Schwarzhoff told us that the average time it takes for a developer to create his or her first Titatnium app is about six weeks. However, as has been the case with GetGlue, subsequent projects -- even if they are on completely different platforms -- take much less time. Alex Iskold, CEO of GetGlue, notes, "The iPhone, Android and iPad apps were built by two developers in just two months."
In addition to consumer apps, Schwarzhoff tells us that Appcelerator is also becoming the platform of choice for business-related applications. SugarCRM, Present.ly and Personify all have apps created with Titanium. eBay actually used Titanium to build an iPhone app for its employees to use internally.
What About the Apple SDK?
In April, Apple updated its developer agreement to preclude the use of third-party platforms and cross-compilers when creating iPhone applications. The likely target of the new provision was Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone creator introduced in Flash CS5, but the wording of the provision made it unclear if other development platforms, such as Unity and Titanium, would also be affected.
Despite the new provision and the period of developer uncertainty that followed, more developers have begun to use Titanium to create apps for the iPhone, and more apps created with Titanium have been accepted into the App Store. There is actually a significant technical distinction between how Appcelerator and Unity work to create iPhone apps and how the iPhone exporter works on Flash CS5.
At this time, as long as all code compiled and created using Appcelerator remains native and the UI libraries and other toolsets also remain native, Appcelerator doesn't anticipate any issues. As it stands now, developers can export their Titanium project directly to an XCode project if that's how they want to finish or submit their app to Apple.
Mobile Development Starts on the iPhone, Quickly Moves to Android
I asked Schwarzhoff about how the number of applications created in Titanium break down between iOS and Android. He said that as of right now, 70% of apps are still created for the iPhone and 30% are for Android. There is also a growing slice of developers who create an app for both platforms.
While iPhone development is still the first stop for most developers, Android is quickly becoming the second platform. Some developers are also moving to iPad directly after creating an app for the iPhone, but the trend seems to be create the iPhone app first, then get an Android version out as soon as possible.
This matches our own observations at Mashable. Over the last six months, we've noticed increasingly shorter delays between the release of a big branded iPhone app and an app for Android. Sometimes Android apps aren't as feature-complete, but even in those cases, updates are coming at a fast rate to bring them more to parity with the iOS world.
The big unknown for many developers right now is what to do about the burgeoning Android tablet market. The iPad already has a userbase in the millions and more than 25,000 iPad-specific apps are in the App Store. The Android landscape is less clear for developers, however, because of the variations in device screen size, resolution and OS version.