VISIONMOBILE:2013 Mobile Developer Economic Report (VII): chapter I mobile duopoly (bottom)

income of the rich and poor

67% per cent of developers interested in profitability are below the poverty line with monthly revenue below

The developer economy surveyed 3,460 visitors in 2013, and about 18% said they were not interested in applying revenue. However, for most of the interested profit developers, 67% cannot get enough income to maintain their upgrade or their business, that is, under the "Applied poverty line" for each application monthly income. For most developers, application development has not been able to get financial returns.

Overall, less than 1/5 of BlackBerry developers can earn more than $ monthly for each application. Windows phone faces almost the same challenge, with only 19% of developers looking for monthly earnings per month, and 61% below the poverty line. The survey found that Android and iOS were getting better, even though the platforms were far from the developer's paradise: 55% of iOS and 54% of Android developers were under the poverty line. Excluding developers who don't care about profitability, 62% of iOS developers and 67% of Android developers can't earn more than a month for each application.

HTML surprisingly only 45% of developers are below the poverty line, far lower than other platforms. The difference between HTML and native platforms, however, leads to differences in observation results: developers using HTML for Web development have a much larger user base, including desktops and mobile users, regardless of the platform. In the HTML developer, the subscription-based revenue model is more prevalent than the native platform, with the upcoming online content or service extending to the mobile.

Steep application entrepreneurship learning curve

49% developers create the apps they want, but end up earning the least

Almost half of the developers surveyed (49%) decided which application to develop according to their own needs. They are also developers with the least monthly income per application, suggesting that they still have a lot to learn about how to plan their application business. Admittedly, it is possible to have a good understanding of users based on their own needs, but there is a lack of rigorous market research or a lack of extension of proven applications to new countries or verticals.

It is worth noting that only 24% of the developer samples are based on discussions with the user to plan the application, which has nothing to do with the development experience or ability. Indicates a bottleneck in the build-measure-learn cycle of lean development to "measure" or listen to user needs. Highlighting the need for frictionless feedback channels between developers and users, like Getstatisfaction pioneered for Web applications, and now Helpshift is the first to do so for mobile applications.

"The developer learning curve is far steeper and more steep in terms of business than coding," George Karavias,anlock developer and CEO

A considerable percentage of developers use market research and competitive intelligence to decide which application to create. Market research and competitive intelligence are already a practice in business development, and we want to be increasingly used by savvy developers who will devote more effort to designing product strategies in the near future.

"Competition analysis is key when deciding what to do with development," Jai JAISIMHA, CEO of Open source Mobility solutions

Published applications more developers tend to make decisions based on different criteria. The decisions made by developers of more than 16 applications are based primarily on the customer or management, who are the most professional developers, who accept commissioned application development or as employees of large publishers, and decide which application to develop based on a reliable business situation. Publishing apps more developers are also more inclined to rely on market research, whether they're buying research or doing their own research based on the store's health and analytics services.

the most widely used planning strategy is to extend the application to vertical or different regions . To some extent, the strategy is dependent on the established and successful business: The application has at least been tried and tested in the market, with less risk choices or "low hanging fruit" for the developer.

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