Vision Mobile has just posted one of the more impressive research reports and surveys that focus on mobile application development. This new report, called Mobile Developer Economics 2010: The migration of developer mindshare examines facts and emotions that guide developers these days in their efforts to make a living from app development. The survey included 400 developers across 8 platforms (iOS (iPhone), Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, Java ME, Windows Phone, Flash Lite, and mobile web.)
The 57 pages are easily considered a must read if you are interested in competitive app development, publishing and marketing in any way, as the data lets you keep an eye on your colleagues and rivals and possibly reveal one or the other surprise.
Vision Mobile’s survey found that Android is carrying the mind share right now, as 60% of its respondents said that they recently developed for that platform. iOS follows in second place and then, … well, then there is really nothing after that as far as mindshare migration is concerned as those two platforms are described as leading the “industrial revolution era” of the mobile app development space:
From the report: “The next five years will completely remap the mobile industry landscape. RIM and Apple, two verticalised companies, move into the top five, displacing the incumbents, leaving one Finnish and two Korean companies in pole position. The operating system landscape will consolidate into two tiers; the top-end open to iconic products dominated by Apple and followed by the iPhone clones powered by Android; and the feature-phone market where licensable operating systems (Android and BREW) will finally allow handset OEMs to move away from legacy RTOS platforms. Google’s Android will also power a diverse range of new form factors, from picture frames to car dashboards, offering for the first time a simplified platform from which to achieve convergent interconnected services. In this age of Industrial Revolution, mobile developers will be responsible for most of the innovation on mobile devices, and can act independently from the mobile industry powers-that-be – OEMs or network operators – to get their applications to market. In this age, developers have both power and choice.”
The lion’s share of the report is dedicated to Android and iOS and if you have ever had competitive questions you might find some answers here.
Among the data that captured my interest was:
– 75% of app developer choose their preferred platform by evaluating the market penetration
– 50% of Windows phone developers have an iPhone
– A standalone developer can expect to sell somewhere between 1000-2000 copies of a $1.99 app
– 5% of iPhone developers said there apps had “very good” revenues
– 27% of iPhone developers said their revenues are as projected
– 24% of iPhone developers reported poor revenues
– The App Store has three times more apps than Android Market, 30 times the apps of Symbian and more than 40 times the apps of Flash Lite.
– 21% of developers say they do not get any support, only ten 10% report very good support
You can discuss why Android carries the mind share and I would have to say that it isn’t entirely clear to me, based on this report. The respondents did criticize Android quite a bit, for example that its App Store model that has virtually no flood gates, makes it harder for high-quality apps to compete. Developers complained about the lack of support, which they can’t even get for money, and they highlighted the lack of documentation of open source platforms, which impacts their development.
You can read the entire report here.