SANTA CRUZ, CA, August 3, 2005 - Researchers at Evans Data Corporation have released the Spring 2005 Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Development Survey and found double digit drop-offs in developers using PHP, Perl and Python for development.

The number of developers using PHP for development dropped by more than 25% in the last year and the number of developers indicating they would not evaluate or use PHP for future development projects grew by almost 40% in the same time period. Perl usage in EMEA has dropped by more than 20% and those developers with no intentions to evaluate or use Perl grew by 20%. Python usage also saw a 25% reduction in current usage and developers without any intention to use or evaluate Python grew by 17% in the last year.

"PHP, Perl and Python use on a global basis peaked one to two years ago and has started to decline based on a number of factors. This decline is more exaggerated in EMEA and APAC than in North America," said John Andrews, Evans Data’s Chief Operating Officer. "One of the key factors to this loss of developer mindshare has been the inability of these languages to penetrate the enterprise space."

Other notable findings from the June 2005 survey of 400 developers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa:

• EMEA developers’ intentions to develop 64-bit applications in two or more years grew by more than 250% in the last six months while those developers with no intentions to develop 64-bit applications dropped by almost 40% in the same period.
• Three out of five developers, 61%, in EMEA have made use of open source software modules in their development but only a third, 33%, have contributed back to the open source community.

Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

Copyright 2007 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

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