How Important is Ease of Development?

If you ignore the needlessly provocative headline, VentureBeat has an interesting article about the relative ease of development of the various mobile platforms. The article quotes my friend Chris Sepulveda of Pivotal Labs extensively:

The iPhone has had a vice-like grip on developers, because it’s been so fun to develop on. Developers can build awesome looking applications, with few barriers. With developers flocking to it, the iPhone is brimming with applications — all of which has driven sales of more than 40 million iPhones and iPod Touches.

But developer Christian Sepulveda of Pivotal Labs, said that has changed. Sepulveda said he’s advising his clients to start on the Pre. The phone’s operating system, called WebOS, offers the most compelling place to build and test a prototype, for both cost and technology reasons, he said.

Clearly, the Palm Pre is so new on the market, and so few phones have been sold, that developers would be crazy if they developed for WebOS and didn’t try to get distribution on other phones, such as the iPhone. But because WebOS is the easiest platform to build, test, review and iterate on, most developers can then port their work over to other phones where more attention can be put into making it work for that particular device.

ARTICLE: VentureBeat: Has the Palm Pre Already Beaten the Iphone?