The PennApps Hackathon was held this weekend at the University of Pennsylvania. The hackathon ran from 6pm Friday evening until this afternoon, with 30 some-odd teams rapidly building their apps. The hackathon was geared towards mobile app development, and participants were given a choice as to which platform they could opt to work on.
Interestingly, even though iPhones were the most popular devices in terms of students’ ownership, with 25% saying that’s what they carry, it was not the most popular platform to develop on – not by a long shot.
16% said they preferred Android. Just 2% chose iPhone, less than the 3% who indicated “mobile Web” was their preference.
The students said they preferred Android for a variety of reasons, including their familiarity with Java. They also indicated they preferred Android as it was flexible, straightforward, and open source.