Oct 23, 2001 12:00 PM,

Wireless development chugging along, researchers say

By Deborah Young, Revenue-Management Editor

Times may be hard for the wireless industry, but that hasn’t slowed down the development of wireless applications, according to Evans Data Corporation (www.evansdata.com)

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The market research group has released the findings of its September North American Developers Survey. Of more than 800 survey respondents, 38.2% said they would absolutely or probably develop wireless applications during the next year. This compares to about 90% that reported doing some Web development and 36.2% who reported spending more than half their time working on Web apps, according to Jay Dixit, Evans Data analyst.

Of the companies represented in Evans Data’s survey, 44.2% employ less than 100 people; 31.4% employ more than 2,000. The top industries represented were consulting and systems integrations firms, computer software makers and government or military groups, which collectively accounted for about 40% of the respondents.

The North American Developers Survey was not designed to focus on wireless development, other than asking whether respondents planned to develop wireless applications in the near future. However, Evans Data draws upon its late-summer international survey of 550 wireless developers to fortify the conclusion that wireless application development doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

Dixit said 20% of the summer survey’s respondents reported plans to spend the majority of their time in the next 18 months developing wireless applications. The developers also expressed interest in emerging wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth.

Dixit said two-thirds of the respondents were either already using Bluetooth or, at least, planning to evaluate it. Similarly, many respondents were interested in wireless LAN. 18.8% of the respondents reported working on 802.11b applications and 26.4% expected to at least evaluate the technology in the future.

“Since they were investing so much time and money into these applications, it seems to me that they still thought wireless was the way of the future,” Dixit said.