By market share, Android is the dominant mobile devices on the market, but the performance of its market share in terms of revenue generation is still lagging behind Apple’s iOS. However, the situation is likely to change in near future. Developers’ community attitudes have started turning to Android applications due to better tools, a very large market share of Android devices, and better income opportunities.

New survey data from Vision Mobile and Evans Data shows that developer interest may indeed be starting to incline to Android. A year ago, Apple iOS was still more favored by the developers–but currently, developers can no longer ignore the rapidly growing user base of the Android market share.

Developers prefer Android

Mature and experienced developers are the fundamental reason for this change. Vision Mobile’s data indicates that more developers have chosen Android as their primary application platform over iOS, Windows, and BlackBerry. According to the data, 34.4% developers on average choose Android as a starting point, 32.7% with Apple’s iOS, followed by HTML5 mobile apps with 17.3%, and Windows Phone with 4.5%.

When it comes to tablet apps, an overwhelming 84% of developers target Android tablets as the primary point for development, while 62% develop for iPads, and surprisingly 52% of developers report designing apps for Windows tablets. The dominating lead in market share by the Android devices is the main reason for developers to trade to Google platform.

VisionMobile’s Developer Segmentation Q3 2013 report also stated that Android is also the most popular choice for all other segments: Enterprise IT, Product Extenders, Digital Content Publishers and Gold Seekers.

New opportunities in emerging markets

Although Google made significant advances in 2013, it’s still way behind the Apple App Store, with revenue share split 65 percent Apple, 35 percent Google. One possible long-term bright spot for Google is that the overall mobile market’s growth including that of iPhone has flattened out over the course of the year, making it incrementally more possible for Google to move to emerging markets.

The majority of application developers in North America and Western Europe develop applications for these markets. Tending to produce localized apps targeted by geographic region, but the situation seems to have changed now.

For example, according to the Vision Mobile survey carried out on 5,266 developers, more prefer Android development over iOS. Developers’ strategy is set by the hundreds of everyday decisions about where developers spend their effort, time and money.

New developers adopt Android first

According to the report, mobile platform priorities is depend on the level of experience by the developers. More experienced developers tend to adopt iOS as their main platform, whereas new developers tend to adopt Android.

“Developers who are fresh to mobile have a much stronger preference towards Android, with almost twice as many new mobile developers preferring Android (40%) than iOS (21%). This is most likely related to the steeper learning curve and higher barriers to entry for iOS, such as ownership of a Mac development machine and the $99 developer fee. More experienced developers tend to adopt iOS as their main platform: 44% of developers with three to five years of experience will use iOS as their main platform vs. 31% that select Android,” says the report.

Games developers choose iOS as their primary platform with 37% favoring iOS against 35% with Android, while developers of music & video apps have a preference towards Android over iOS (36% vs 29%).

iOS still leads in app revenue

When dealing with developers revenue, in-app purchases and pay-per-download margin is about twice as much in iOS’s favor. Apple’s iOS is the leading source of app revenue for in-app purchases and pay-per-download, while Android made most of its presence felt in both pay-per-download and in-app advertising.

“Whereas Android has 4x times more devices shipping and a significant lead in Mobile Developer Mindshare, it lags behind iOS in terms of Android developers using it as their lead platform. This has fundamental implications in the feature, quality and marketing, and revenue delta that these developers will prioritize on iOS, and the resulting better experience for iOS users,” the report said.

But the gap on the monetization of iOS developers and Android developers have been narrowed. Perhaps, this would be because developers began pouring time and attention to Android as mobile market mature. However, there is no doubt that emerging markets are also contributing to the elimination of the gap.