Eight technologies that mobile developers cannot ignore

In recent years, the influence of programmers, especially mobile developers, seems to have spread to all levels of the world and played a representative and important role in it. Smartphones and tablet devices are becoming more and more popular, and the Internet of Things is also brewing a rapid rise, all of which have given those technicians who make a living by creating applications and tool software a more considerable social status. In a large-scale global survey report, we have seen a series of technological development trends that will have a significant impact on mobile developers and the entire mobile ecosystem.

The eighth edition of the report published by VisionMobile, "Developer Ecosystem: The State of Developers in the First Quarter of 2015", was officially released earlier this month. The survey subjects of this report cover more than 8,000 mobile developers from a total of 143 countries. The survey content of the report includes important trends such as the types of platforms that developers focus on, the tools they use in their work, and their motivations for work. In today's article, we will summarize and take you to understand these eight facts that are closely related to mobile developers.

The battle for developers between iOS and Android is now at a stalemate

Android tops the list of mobile platform popularity with 40% of full-time mobile developers worldwide, followed by iOS with 37% of mobile developers - this clear-cut situation has not changed significantly in the past year. iOS has a larger developer base in North America and Europe (42% compared to 33% for Android), but Android has become the most popular mainstream platform among developers in other regions of the world (48% compared to 30% for iOS). Although Windows Phone ranks third, it attracts far fewer developers than the top two, with a global popularity of only 8%. The next 7% of developers focus on building mobile browser products.

The report states: "The market positions of the various mobile platforms are entrenched. Apple cannot abandon its high-end sales positioning to gain low-end share, and Android phone manufacturers have also found themselves unable to successfully attract the attention of high-end customers. ... The market share battle is essentially over."

Mobile developers are embracing Swift at an unprecedented pace

Just a few months after Apple released the Swift programming language, 20% of mobile developers worldwide have already started using it in their work, but only 2% of developers use it as their primary development language, reflecting people's cautious attitude when choosing a new language. Swift currently ranks seventh in mobile developer support, with Java ranking first, with 57% of developers supporting it worldwide and 29% of practitioners using it as their primary language. Among developers who have quickly embraced the Swift language, 77% have already used Objective-C in the past, and 29% of Swift programmers still use Objective-C as their primary programming language.

The report states: “…It’s fair to say that Swift has reached unprecedented levels of adoption. For a language that is still evolving and for which the tooling is still immature…Swift’s performance is impressive.”

The middle class of app developers is disappearing

In the income structure of developers, application revenue is showing an increasingly polarized characteristic - most developers do not earn much, but a small number of them make a lot of money. From a global perspective, only 24% of mobile developers can earn between $1,000 and $10,000 per month from applications, more than half (52%) of mobile developers earn less than $1,000 per month from applications, and 24% of developers can earn more than $10,000 per month from applications. The more developed the region, the smaller the size of the middle class among application developers. The proportion of middle-class developers in Oceania, North America and Western Europe is about 20%; but in less developed regions such as South America, Eastern Europe and Russia, the proportion of middle-class developers is close to 30%.

Developers working on iOS development have the highest average income, including the largest middle class. 15% of iOS developers earn more than $50,000 per month, but 37% of developers working on iOS as their primary platform earn less than $500 per month. The polarization is even more obvious in the Android camp, with 55% of practitioners earning less than $500 per month and only 7% of practitioners earning more than $50,000 per month.

“In mature markets with high smartphone penetration, the middle class of small independent app developers is disappearing as they compete head-on with large, highly skilled developers on the software distribution platforms and against developers from other countries with lower costs of living, which is a major driver of income polarization,” the report states.

Most mobile developers are creating software products for IoT

However, the software market in the field of IoT is still relatively immature. Currently, more than half of mobile application developers (53%) have begun to participate in IoT projects. However, as far as the current situation is concerned, most of the IoT software development work is still in the experimental stage; 30% of mobile developers participating in IoT projects simply treat this part of the work as a hobby (30%) or as a secondary project (nearly 20%). Mobile developers who take the IoT market as their main target business are mainly concentrated in the field of home and building management (accounting for 37% of all relevant developers), followed by the field of wearable devices (accounting for 35%).

“Major smartphone vendors are entering the IoT market by expanding their existing software ecosystems,” the report states. “The IoT markets that these developers are most interested in are those where the smartphone platform plays a central role.”

More mobile developers are using cross-platform tools

The report states that 83% of mobile developers are using at least one third-party tool. User analytics tools are the most popular among developers, with 47% of all developers using them in their work, followed by ad networks (31%), cross-platform tools (30%), push notifications (24%), and game development tools (24%). Developers targeting iOS as their primary mobile platform are most likely to use third-party tools, with 57% using user analytics tools (compared to 47% of Android developers), 36% using app store analytics tools (compared to 14% of Android developers), and 17% using cross-promotion networks (compared to 6% of Android developers). Cross-platform tools are gaining popularity, currently winning the support of 30% of all mobile developers, 40% of mobile browser developers, 34% of iOS programmers, and 25% of Android programmers.

The report states: “Web hybrid solutions and Xamarin are becoming increasingly popular among enterprise-focused developers. This has transformed cross-platform tools from being irrelevant to revenue-positive. … There is currently a strong market demand for cross-platform development among enterprise customers.”

Mobile developers increasingly choose the enterprise market

While the majority of mobile developers (64%) still see the consumer market as their primary source of revenue, 20% of all mobile developers are now heavily focused on the enterprise market, up from 16% six months ago. Enterprise clients are more willing to pay for practical software solutions, which will also bring more significant financial returns to developers of enterprise solutions: 45% of enterprise developers can achieve more than $10,000 per month in revenue, compared to only 19% of developers focusing on the consumer market. Programmers focusing on the enterprise market are also more likely to develop for cross-platforms because enterprises often have specific requirements for this; for example, 11% of enterprise developers mainly target mobile browsers as the operating platform, while the proportion of consumer developers is only 5%.

The report states: “…corporate customers are increasingly demanding good mobile solutions, and products and services that work well are gaining ground in marketing campaigns through word of mouth. In addition, development work targeting the consumer market is extremely competitive, and the cost of promoting any application to a large user base is very high.”

Compared with other developer groups, iOS developers place more emphasis on financial returns

VisionMobile divides mobile developers and observes their work motivations. About half of all developers are just for fun, some of them participate in projects to help themselves accumulate development experience (23%), and some simply create application results for the purpose of gaining income (23%). In contrast, the proportion of developers who are just for fun in the Android camp is slightly higher (26%), and the proportion of developers who are for the purpose of making money is slightly lower (21%). Among the group of developers who mainly develop applications for mobile browsers, the proportion of developers who are for profit purposes is the highest (that is, developers who develop commercial products, accounting for 19%), followed by developers for experimental purposes (18%). On the other hand, iOS developers are more inclined to choose profit-driven premises, among which 31% have economic benefits as the goal, followed by commercial market participants accounting for 20% and experimental participants accounting for 17%.

The report states: “The preponderance of profit-seeking developers (among iOS developers) reflects that the mobile platform has the best economic return, while the widespread emergence of commercial-oriented targeted solution developers means that the relevant contract market has emerged as corporate customers hope to promote their main business in the form of applications on the iOS platform.”

Mobile developers chasing the wrong revenue models

The vast majority of mobile developers (73%) are still relying on traditional revenue models such as app sales (37%) or advertising (36%). However, the revenue generated by these two models (app sales revenue is expected to reach $40.5 billion in 2015, while advertising revenue is expected to reach $34 billion) is being plundered by the e-commerce model (worth up to $300 billion). Only 9% of mobile developers are building e-commerce applications, which means they are missing out on the most important revenue growth opportunity.

“Despite the significant revenue opportunity presented by mobile commerce, only 9% of developers are currently pursuing this revenue model,” the report states. “Unless there is a significant amount of e-commerce development work being done through other models… there will continue to be a significant gap between supply and demand in this market.”