Today at the Android Developer Conference (AnDevCon (III)), Black Duck Software announced an analysis of open source mobile project data which reveals mobile open source software (OSS) projects doubled, with growth especially strong in new enterprise mobility projects aimed at enhancing security, encryption, cloud, mobile payments and database management.
More than 10,000 new mobile open source projects were launched in 2011 bringing the cumulative total to over 18,000, according to the Black Duck KnowledgeBase, which is a database including over 600,000 projects from more than 5,000 sites, and is updated with thousands of new projects on a regular basis. The surge in new projects reflects twofold growth in mobile projects since 2010, continuing the trend of double annual growth in new projects in each of the last three years.
“Black Duck metrics highlight momentum and opportunity in the market, both for open source software and for enterprise developers and organizations as well,” said Jay Lyman, Senior Analyst, 451 Research. “Just as we see in cloud computing, open source software is prominent in the mobile space where vibrant mobile operating systems, applications and communities require sufficient knowledge of codebases and proactive approach with policy for efficiency and innovation.”
New project growth appears to be fueled by interest in the open source Android platform. Burgeoning growth in Android shipments and the platform’s installed base (about two times as many Android phones have been sold versus iOS(1)), interest in OSS platforms, and community support for Android reinforce the new project data. Looking at platform trends of those OSS projects that specified a platform, highlights include:
• Over 70 percent of new mobile OSS projects were created for Android
• While the absolute number of iOS projects also increased in 2011, overall iOS share of new projects declined from the prior year to 20 percent
• Remaining platforms make up approximately four percent of new project activity
Enterprise mobility represented a significant trend, accounting for almost 10 percent of new projects. Leading projects include:
• Payment applications such as Zimbrew for secure mobile payments, and QR code scanners like YardSale which enables users to make purchases through PayPal
• Security applications like OATH.net which implements HOTP and TOTP algorithms for two-factor authentication
• Cloud applications such as Cumulus, a CloudStack Android client, and acloud, the Android version of iCloud
• Database engines for mobile apps including TouchDB, a lightweight Apache CouchDB-compatible engine suitable to embed into mobile apps
• The device agnostic OpenMEAP, an HTML5 mobile enterprise application platform, is a complete end-to-end solution using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for connectivity and supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for the secure transfer of data via a variety of mobile networks
“The mobile industry and open source community have the undivided attention of enterprise development organizations,” said Peter Vescuso, Executive Vice President, Black Duck Software. “As mobile apps displace desktop applications and mobile devices displace laptops and desktops, the high-quality apps we’ve seen thus far will become more popular, undoubtedly bringing the level of OSS interest and use within enterprises to an all-time high.”
For more information about Black Duck Software please visit www.blackducksoftware.com. For open source project and license information and trends, visit the Black Duck Open Source Resource Center.
