PHP & Apache: the Tools of the Mobile Web

We recently ran a survey on mobiForge with a view to getting a better understanding of the tools and work habits of mobile web developers using our services.

A number of you had expressed an interest in seeing the outcome of the survey, so we've compiled the results and created some graphs for your viewing pleasure.

Some interesting highlights include:

• PHP and Apache are the tools of choice among those surveyed, although both Java and .NET feature significantly too - this is interesting, but probably not unexpected
• 90% of those who took the survey have at least a basic awareness of the need for device detection
• more than 65% have or intend to use some form of device detection
• for delivering 'adapting' mobile web sites, the preferred approach is to develop a single site with adapting content (~50%), rather than by targeting versions of a site at specific devices (~20%), or by targeting versions of a site at clusters of devices(~20%)
• the most popular CMS is Wordpress, followed by Joomla - no real surprises here

And now, for detailed results keep on reading...

Survey Results

Q. If you are not currently developing a mobile site do you have plans to do so in the next 12 months?

Q. Are you familiar with the need for identifying specific mobile devices for the purposes of optimising content?

Q. Do you / will you implement Device Detection in your mobile site?

Q. If you do plan to implement Device Detection, what will be the purpose?

Q. Which methodology will you employ for your mobile web design?

Q. Which operating system are you developing on?

Q. What Web Server are you using?

Q. What Programming Language do you use?

Q. If you are developing a mobile site are you building it on top of a web framework?

Q. If you are using a Content Management System which one are you using?

Q. Which authoring tools are you currently using?

(Thanks to Eoin at dotMobi for putting the graphs together!)