Location developers show scant interest in webOS, Symbian

Fewer than 10 percent of location-aware application developers express interest in porting their apps to the Palm webOS and Symbian platforms, according to a new survey conducted by location system provider Skyhook Wireless. Skyhook notes that location-aware app developers are focusing most of their efforts on environments including iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, J2ME and Symbian--56 percent of respondents said they plan to port their applications to other platforms, with 58 percent of non-Android developers targeting the Google platform and 40 percent of non-iPhone programmers planning to launch their apps via Apple's App Store. Only 8 percent of location-aware developers are least interested in porting their apps to webOS, however, and only 9 percent plan to turn their attention to Symbian.

Although location awareness was once almost exclusively integrated into navigation applications, Skyhook notes developers now incorporate location into 21 different types of apps ranging from education to entertainment to finance. Seventy-three percent of survey respondents' applications require exact location, with neighborhood-level positioning required by another 19 percent. Only 3 percent desire broader city-level approximation, and another 5 percent demand country-level. In addition, 73 percent of developers agree that very fast location results are critical to their app's performance.

For more on the Skyhook survey:
- read this release

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