Over 80 per cent of Japanese game developers are interested in developing titles for the iPhone, according to a new survey by Japanese middleware developer CRI.

Of the the 102 people surveyed, 87 per cent said that they were interested in developing for the iPhone and iPod Touch. 18 per cent had already released games on the platform, while 16 per cent were currently working on titles. 38 per cent said that their company wanted to develop for the platform but had not put any plans into action yet.

The survey also asked opinions of smartphones other than the iPhone platform. 47 per cent were interested in Android, while 39 per cent were more interested in Windows Mobile. Only 2 per cent voted for Symbian, and only 6 per cent for Palm's new Pre handset.

From a business perspective, the top three reasons for wanting to develop for the iPhone were being able to release simultaneously in over 80 countries (64.7 per cent), the size of the market (55.9 per cent) and the ease of purchasing from the iTunes store (42.2 per cent). The top three reasons from a development perspective were that it was a portable device (71.6 per cent), that the touch-screen was an intuitive interface method (71.6 per cent) and the multi-touch capabilities (55.9 per cent)

50 per cent of those that responded said that the biggest drawback of iPhone development was that development had to be done on Macs, while 42.2 per cent felt like there weren't enough sources of information (42.2 per cent) and that English was the base language for developer support (39.2 per cent).

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You can download the full survey results here (registration required, Japanese only).