Web Development and SDK Development each offer distinct advantages to the iPhone  Developer. One uses your favorite web-based language, HTML, Custom Style Sheets and JavaScript for the Safari Browser on the iPhone. The other to run native Objective-C applications on the device, written with Apple's Development tools suite headed by XCode.

At a high level, Web Developers benefit from ease of simple development, deployment and updating speed, where SDK Developers benefit from integration with the iPhone core device features and native speed that allows the creation of complex solutions.

So I set out over the last two months, with the aid of the LinkedIn Polls feature to gauge the trend and here's my result



As I mentioned already, each way of developing has advantages, so the figure of 47% for those quite rightly airing on the side of caution and taking the conservative view of 'it depends' is no surprise. What is more telling is the figure of 40% of developers polled that think the iPhone Software Developer Kit is the best way to develop.

When you break down Apple's latest figures from last week, that state over 800,000 downloads of the SDK & 50,000 companies & individuals who have joined the Apple iPhone Developer Program (62% whom have never developed for Apple before), it shows a wave that is ever increasing. Now with the announcement of the SDK & OS for 3.0 containing 1000 new API's for developers that follow SDK development, I believe the SDK route has cemented itself as the #1 way for innovative and exciting application development.

On top of these facts, the figures of over 25,000 Applications submitted to the iTunes App Store and 800,000 downloads of those...which is more likely over 1M now, must be very compelling to developers.