Of the 2760 Appcelerator developers surveyed from April 11 to 13, 85 percent reported an interest in developing apps for Android phones while 71 percent expressed interest in making apps for Android tablets. While those percentages are high, they're also down two and three percentage points respectively from the same survey Appcelerator conducted in January. The drop-off comes after Android had logged steady gains in developer interest over the past year, according to Appcelerator.

In contrast, Apple's iOS platform continues to interest Appcelerator developers. Interest in developing apps for the iPhone clocked in at 91 percent in the most recent survey, while iPad app interest was 86 percent. Those numbers are essentially unchanged from last quarter's survey, Appcelerator vice president of marketing Scott Schwarzhoff told .

Surveys of developer preference should always be taken with the customary grains of salt, but the latest Appcelerator numbers provide an interesting snapshot for a couple reasons. First, the survey features developers who use Appcelerator Titanium, a cross-platform mobile development tool--in other words, a crowd with an interest in building apps across multiple platforms. There's also the issue of timing--the survey comes after some of the have hit the market, giving mobile developers their first chance to see that hardware in action.

And that could be one of the main drivers behind developers' cooling enthusiasm toward making apps for Android tablets, according to Appcelerator's latest survey. Asked which areas pose the biggest risks to Android's success, two-thirds of the developers surveyed cited fragmentation, with 30 percent citing weak traction for tablets and 28 percent saying there were too many Android app stores. (Developers could cite more than one risk.)

With , fragmentation has been a growing concern in the Android market. But Schwarzhoff argues that Android fragmentation is only part of the story: "Fragmentation is basically six layers deep," he said.