Nokia's Maemo: 43% of mobile developers in favour

So it’s time for today’s survey item and I’m taking a break from Vodafone 360 — this time we’re looking at Maemo.  If you recall, we’ve been running a mobile developer sentiment survey as part of the report we’re writing for an investment bank.   The survey is aimed at measuring sentiment, nothing more. (And the sample size is 500 — I forgot to mention that in yesterday’s Vodafone post).

To the question, then.

I asked the developers to complete my sentence, thus:

Nokia’s Maemo is…

The choices I gave:

– very exciting
– irrelevant to me as a developer
– the last gasp from Finland

Remember, we wanted to measure sentiment — back of the pub commentary, if you like — which explains the series of choices I’ve provided.

A reasonable 44% reckoned that Maemo is ‘very exciting‘.  I agree with that. Provided they can get a good amount of developer attention, I think the device (and the platform) — with a fair wind — could eek out a nice percentage of the marketplace.

27% of respondents had next to no opinion of the platform, labelling it ‘irrelevant to me as a developer‘.  I can understand that if you’re exclusively an iPhone Developer, with no plans to branch out to Maemo any time soon, you’d probably select this.

Finally, just under 30% declared Maemo the, ‘last gasp from Finland‘.  I put this option in just to measure mobile developer bile — and the percentage opting for this surprised me.   I thought the majority — the iPhone fans, for example — would select the ‘irrelevant’ one.   But I had a suspicion that many developers actually had a derisory viewpoint of Maemo (and Nokia) — the ‘why bother, go home, you’ve had your shot’ opinion.  I wonder if this percentage segment is explained by that.

So there you have it.  Right now 56% of mobile developers questioned have a directly negative or irrelevant perspective on Maemo.  That’s not as bad as I thought it could be.