Sneak preview: Developer Economics 2013

[With only one week left till the end of our Developer Economics 2013 survey, Andreas Pappas offers a sneak preview into some preliminary results.]

With less than a week to go and over 2,000 developers responding so far, this has been one of our most successful developer surveys to date. It is also our largest project so far, involving the whole team at VisionMobile, 6 sponsors and 26 media and regional partners worldwide. But we don’t want to stop here; we want to push the limits even further and with your help we can achieve this. So, if you’re a developer, take the survey – if not, please help us spread the word far and wide!

Developer Economics reports reach over 35,000 industry members and help developers, platform vendors and other players understand trends and challenges in the app economy and make important decisions about platforms, tools, developer outreach activities and strategy.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, now is the chance to have your say and shape the things to come. As a bonus, we’ve got some cool gadgets to give away to a few lucky respondents. Also, all respondents are eligible for a free three-month subscription to Bugsense bug-tracking and crash reporting service.

The Developer Economics survey shows some interesting trends so far. We won’t spoil the surprise, so we’re keeping the numbers for later on, after the survey ends and our analysis is completed. What we can reveal though are snippets from a first look into our data:

– Advertising services are the most popular developer tools

Ad services (including ad networks and mediation engines, e.g. AdMob) are the most popular tools, used by about a third of developers in our survey. The least popular services so far are Cross-Promotion networks and Voice services, the latter remaining a niche, used by less than 10% of all developers. If you’re a developer using these services we’d be really interested to hear from you. – Android developers are picking up their tablets

Our results so far indicate a substantial increase in the number of Android developers that target tablets. This is not surprising following the release of the Nexus tablet, but it could be an indicator that Android is finally making inroads into the tablet market. Nevertheless, iOS remains the king of tablets, with an even larger number of iOS developers developing for iPads. – Advertising is now a more popular revenue model than pay-per downloads

Last year the most popular revenue model was pay-per-download, used on average by 34% of developers, followed closely by advertising. The situation has now been reversed, with advertising taking the top spot among revenue models, in terms of popularity but not revenue. – And the best platform is …

We asked developer to rate platforms they have already used or are planning to use against a set of attributes such as development cost, learning curve, app discoverability etc. When it comes to the best development environment the jury is split with Android and iOS fighting a very close battle. What’s your take on this? – How do developers decide what app to develop?

Do developers sit around and wait for inspiration or do they pay for market research? Well, some of them do both. Others ask their users what apps they would like, while some develop me-too apps. But the majority of developers just develop the apps they want to use themselves!

That’s all we can say for now but stay tuned for the full results. We’re planning to release really interesting data on:

– platform mindshare

– revenues by platform

– revenue models that work best

– most popular developer tools by platform & app category

– developer tool ratings and selection criteria

– and much, much more!

Here’s a list of the tools included in our survey:Ad NetworksAdColony

AdMarvel

AdMob

AdWhirl

AirpushApple (iAd)

Burstly

Fiksu

Flurry

InMobiInneractive

JumpTap

Lead Bolt

MillenialMedia

mOcean MobileMobClix

Nexage

mopub

Smaato

warp.lyBack-End as a ServiceACS

Applicasa

Apstrata

Buddy

CloudMineCloudyRec

Deployd

FeedHenry

iKnode

Kinveykumulos

mobDB

Parse

ScottyApp

sencha.ioStackMob

Usergrid (Apigee)

Trestle (Flurry)

QuickBloxBug TrackingAirbreak

ApphanceBugSense

CrashlyticsCrittercism

Hockey AppTestFlight

UsermetrixCross-Platform ToolsAdobe AIR

Appcelerator

AppMobi

BrightcoveCorona

Marmalade

MonoMoSync

PhoneGap

QtRunRev

Sencha

UnityCross-Promo NetworksadDash

AdDuplex

AppCircle (Flurry)

Applifier

AppFlood (Papaya)Chartboost

clashmedia

Fiksu

G6PayGreatPlay Network

Jampp

maudau

RevMobSponsorPay

Tapjoy

W3i

Wavex (6waves)User AnalyticsApsalar

Bango

DistimoFlurry

Google

LocalyticsMobClix

mopappTestflight Live (Burstly)

UserMetrixVoice ServicesAT&T

Deutsche Telecom

FonYou

GetVocal

HarQenHoiio

Ifbyphone

IOVOX

Jaduka

MicrosoftOneAPI

Sendflow

Skype

Telefonica

TelekuTringMe

Tropo

Twilio

Verizon

Vivox

If you haven’t completed the survey yet there’s still some time to do so. We’d really like to hear about your developer experience, either via the survey or directly.

Also, don’t forget to spread the word!

– Andreas

You should follow me on Twitter (@pappasandreas)

#ios #mobiledeveloper #Android #appdevelopment #Blackberry