If the mobile wars of the future are to be fought and won by the developers, it's looking like a battle between Google and Apple. A new survey from Appcelerator has found that Android narrowly beat out the iPhone/iPad as the most popular developer platform. Enterprise Mobile Today reports on the race between Google's Android and Apple's iPhone/iPad platforms, and offers color about where Microsoft and BlackBerry fit into the picture.

Interest among mobile application developers in Apple's iPad, due to ship Saturday, has waned slightly, allowing it and the iPhone to fall behind the Android platform -- but the Apple devices are still well ahead of every other mobile platform by a healthy margin.

In a survey of 1,028 developers, Appcelerator, developer of a platform for rapidly creating native mobile, desktop, and iPad applications using Web technologies, found Android is the most popular platform, with 86 percent of developers surveyed saying they are interested in writing apps for the open source operating system within the next year.

The iPhone/iPad came in second, slipping from 90 percent interest in writing an app for it in the January survey to 80 percent now, hardly a fatal loss. Appcelerator suggested that the dip in interest came about thanks to Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) finally introducing the device after months of speculation, and developers were disappointed to see a lack of a camera and multitasking.

