Boston-based Black Duck Software, among the 400 largest software companies in the world, helps accelerate software development with products and services for finding, managing and deploying open source software.

Today the company released some interesting mobile data pulled from the almost 9,000 mobile projects contained in their KnowledgeBase. (KnowledgeBase is the “most comprehensive database of open source software and associated license and other information” which you can learn more about here.)

Overall, the release highlights that there was a 44 percent increase in mobile projects in 2010:

And according to Black Duck, Android is leading the pack as the platform of choice for developers. Of the 3,800 new mobile projects started in 2010, 55 percent were on the Android platform. Apple’s iOS was close behind representing 39 percent of mobile projects started in 2010. Other platforms (Windows, Palm, Symbian, MeeGo) had a 2 percent or lower share of these new projects. Android is open source and iOS is not, so Black Duck’s takeaway is that developers support the most popular platforms, regardless of their openness.

“Mobile software has the full and focused attention of commercial and FOSS development communities,” said Peter Vescuso, Executive Vice President, Black Duck Software. “As mobile apps displace desktop applications and mobile devices displace laptops and desktops we expect to see broad commercial developer interest in the top mobile development platforms, as well as consolidation in the number of platforms that draw developer support.”

The release also notes that while many mobile projects like Android have large code bases, the blatant trend in 2010 was growth of apps – particularly those transit related and for events.