#visionmobile

More Developers Working Across Mobile, IoT And Cloud, Argues VisionMobile

A new study from analyst house VisionMobile has looked into the global developer landscape and found Java to be the most popular language while devs are increasingly working across multiple sectors, including mobile, IoT, and cloud.

The latter makes sense as tools and languages work across sectors, the developers using them do as well yet the research, which polls more than 30,000 developers…

Mobile Developers, Win Prizes For Your Opinion!

The Mobile Technology Association of Michigan (MTAM) is once again happy to help our audience of mobile developers have a chance to win great prizes by participating in the VisionMobile Developer Economics semi-annual research survey.

Developer economics is the largest, most global app developer research and engagement program. Reaching up to 10,000 developers in over 140 countries, it’s…

In an earlier post, I announced that with the API Magazine I teamed up with VisionMobile as media partner for their 7th global survey for the Developer Economics Report 2014/Q3. I am very happy to announce that this report is now finalized and available.

Developer Economics is the leading research program on mobile developers and the app economy, tracking developer experiences across platforms, revenues, apps, tools, APIs, segments and regions.

Based on a survey of 10,000+ app developers, the 7th edition Developer Economics: State of the Developer Nation Q3 2014 research report investigates the latest trends and discusses platforms, languages, consumer vs. enterprise revenues, as well as developer tools and segments.

Download your free Developer Economics report here.

  Here are the key insights of that report summarized:

On a global level the platform wars are ending with iOS claiming the majority of the high-end device market and Android winning almost everywhere else. Windows Phone continues to gain developer mindshare steadily at 28%.

HTML5 is the most widely used at 42% of developers with Java, the native language on Android, the next most popular at 38%.

A surprisingly high 47% of iOS developers and 42% of Android developers are using something other than the native language on their platforms.

The majority of app businesses are not sustainable at current revenue levels. 50% of iOS developers and 64% of Android developers are below the ‘app poverty line” of $500 per app per month.

67% of mobile app developers primarily target consumers and 11% target professionals directly. The 16% of developers who target enterprises are twice as likely to be earning over $5k per app per month and almost 3 times as likely to earn more than $25k per app per month.

Games dominate app store revenues, yet most games developers struggle. 33% of developers make games but 57% of those games make less than $500 per month.

Third party tools are a critical part of successful app businesses. There’s a strong correlation between tool use and revenues, the more tools a developer uses, the more money they make.

The breakdown of developer segments that target each platform is determined by how well the platforms help them meet their goals. Adoption of iOS amongst Explorers and particularly Hobbyists is limited, while the opposite is true for Windows Phone.

The key themes covered in the report are:

Platform wars go local - Global vs. regional Mindshare

Language ranking - Most popular vs. most actively used programming languages

Language lock-in - Language mix for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry

App monetization - App revenues globally, Android vs. iOS, app revenue split

Consumer vs. enterprise - Revenues for developers targeting consumers vs. enterprises

Game developers - Revenues for mobile game devs, top platforms and tools

Developer tools - Revenues of devs using tools, top tool categories

Developer segments - Characteristics, sizes and revenues of the 8 developer segments

Download your free Developer Economics report here.

  About VisionMobile

Take the new Developer Economics 10-minute survey and win great tech prizes! http://www.vmob.me/DE3Q14ADA

...is a question which is probably not only very relevant for evangelists but for everyone who is in the mobile apps business or interacts with developers.

Here is the conclusion up front: it is more about fun and achievement than money as you might think. But read on for the details...

Vision Mobile as so often, did a fantastic job in coming up with a developer segmentation framework, which was published the first time (I believe) in their Developer Economics 2012 report.

What's novel about this approach is that they do not segment based on demographics or socioeconomics (which is useless) but follow a needs-based concept described by Harvard Prof Clayton Christensen as jobs-to-be-done. Christensen BTW is also the guy behind the Innovator's Dilemma. 

Vision Mobile's framework describes the following mobile app developer segments (based on a survey of 1,500+ developers from across the globe):

The Hobbyists

The Explorers

The Hunters

Guns for Hire

Product Extenders

Digital Media Publishers

Gold Seekers

Corporate IT

So, after this preamble, let's turn to the real question:

What do developers want?

As a result of a more recent study with 6,000 respondents from 115 countries, Vision Mobile established the hierarchy of developer needs. The various motivators can be classified according to three groups:

Community belonging

Commercial success

Personal fulfillment

What is really surprising is that commercial success factors are not the most important.

Ranked as the most important motivators are the 'sense of self achievement' (53%) and the 'fun of building an app' (40%). On third spot is the first commercial motivator 'building a successful business' (34%) and making 'money' appears on the fifth spost (28%).

Apart from the motivators, what is also very interesting, is the segment split and what developers aim for. Vision Mobile identified three main aims:

1. Revenues from the app economy

Hunters and Guns for hire represent this type of aim and 42% of all developers count to these two segments making 48% of total revenues. This group prefers the iOS platform.

2. Self improvement

Explorers (20%) and Hobbyists (13%) work towards that goal representing 33% of the developer base making 13% of the revenues. They prefer Blackberry and Windows OSs.

3. Extending a business

This aim is mostly represented by Product extenders (10%), Corporate IT (6%), Digital media publishers (5%), and Gold seekers (4%). It is the smallest cluster of 25% developers but accounting for 39% of revenues. Preferred platforms are Android and HTML5.

My verdict:

It is important -- epecially for an evangelist -- to understand that there are different developer segments. Developers belonging to different segments have different needs and expect different things. Hence, you should target them differently. And it is not all about the money. Mostly it is actually about fun, and creating or achieving something.