39 per cent of developers view Google – and its broad range of assets, including Google+, Gmail, Android, and search – as more key to implementing social strategies in 2012 than Facebook, according to a report  from mobile platform company Appcelerator the leading and analyst firm IDC.

Based on a survey of 2,173 Appcelerator developers around the world, the Q1 2012 Mobile Developer Report shows that developers are struggling to understand and leverage Facebooks social graph. Accordingly, it ranked at eighth place, out of 11 social priorities for developers.

“This translates into a big competitive opportunity for Google – and potential significant risk for Facebook – especially because developers perceive Google as innovating faster than Facebook,” says Scott Ellison, VP mobile & connected consumer platforms at IDC. “Add to that, Google itself is clearly gearing up to leverage its network effects, one example being the alteration of its privacy policies to allow sharing of user data across its services.”

Good news for Google in general, then – but, at least in terms of native apps, interest in Android is waning. The platform has fallen behind iOS, due to continued fragmentation, dropping 4.7 percentage points to 78.6 per cent of developer interest.

Meanwhile, HTML5 has stepped in – 79 per cent of mobile developers intend to integrate the fragmentation-friendly platform into their apps in 2012.

Overall, app development continues to accelerate – 53.5 per cent of respondents reported that they are now focused on accelerating their mobile strategies, compared to 27.4 per cent in 2010. 16.9 per cent of respondents report that they will be focused on innovating their apps in 2012, compared to 9.2 per cent in 2010.

The full report can be read here.