the smartphone market fell 2.7% in that same period. It also decreased by 20% in Q3 2009. At one time Windows Mobile was the most popular handset for business use, but by 2009 this was no longer the case; 24% of planned business deployments of mobile application in the United States were for Windows Mobile, putting it in 3rd place, behind BlackBerry (61%) and iPhone OS (27%); In February 2009, Microsoft signed a deal with the third largest mobile phone maker, LG Electronics, to license Windows Mobile OS on 50 upcoming LG smartphone models. But in September 2009, Palm, Inc. announced it would drop Windows Mobile from its smartphone line-up. Gartner estimated that by the third quarter of 2009 Windows Mobile's share of worldwide smartphone sales was 7.9%. By August 2010, it was the least popular smartphone operating system, with a 5% share of the worldwide smartphone market (after Symbian, BlackBerry OS, Android and iOS). An October 2009 report in DigiTimes said that Acer will shift its focus from Windows Mobile to Google Android. The New York Times reported in 2009 that Windows Mobile "is foundering", as cellphone makers desert it in favor of Google's Android phone platform. It cited the difficulties in Microsoft's business model, which involves charging handset manufacturers up to $25 for each copy of Windows Mobile, while rival Google gives away Android for free. From late 2009 analysts and media reports began to express concerns about the future viability of the Windows Mobile platform, and whether Microsoft would keep supporting it into the future. Samsung announced in November 2009 that it would phase out the Windows Mobile platform, to concentrate on its own Bada operating system, Google's Android, and Microsoft's Windows Phone. Software development Software could be developed by third parties for the Windows Mobile operating system. Developers had several options for deploying mobile applications. These included writing native code with Visual C++, managed code that worked with the .NET Compact Framework, writing code in Tcl-Tk with eTcl, GCC using CeGCC, Python using PythonCE or server-side code that could be deployed using Internet Explorer Mobile or a mobile client on a user's device. The .NET Compact Framework was a subset of the .NET Framework and hence shared many components with software development on desktop clients, application servers, and web servers which had the .NET Framework installed, thus integrating networked computing space. To aid developers Microsoft released