Posts tagged ‘VisionMobile’
Apkudo is proud to be a partner in the VisionMobile Developer Economics 2013 survey! As we launch the Developer Economics 2013 online survey, Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas has written a guest blog post to introduce Developer Economics 2013, the fourth in our series of developer research reports. This time we’re benchmarking the building blocks of the app economy, from analytics tools to voice APIs. Join us in Developer Economics 2013, take the online survey and win great prizes. Enjoy!
Back in June 2012 we launched Developer Economics 2012, the third in our series of reports that focused on app ecosystems, developer segmentation, platform economics and global app trade routes.
Today we are embarking on the evolution of our developer research: Developer Economics 2013 focuses on the best practices for the tools, services and APIs that developers use to build, market and monetise their apps. Take the survey, have your say on your favourite tools and win prizes; including an iPhone 5, a Samsung Galaxy SIII, a Galaxy Tab 2, 2 x Nokia Lumia 920, Blackberry Dev Alpha and a 4G LTE Blackberry PlayBook. The survey will soon be available in Chinese, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Korean. Developer Economics 2013 is sponsored by AT&T, Mozilla, Nokia, BrightCove, BlackBerry and Telefonica.
A service economy develops around app ecosystems
The mobile development landscape has undergone a massive transformation since the early days of the iOS and Android platforms. In the early stages developers faced a limited supply of tools and services to assist them with crossing platforms, beautifying the UI, bridging fragmentation, integrating with ad networks or analysing user behaviour. They had to create most of the building blocks from scratch using their own means.
As mobile application development continues its growth from 100,000s to millions of apps, the rush for gold has sparked a rush for spades. Across the developer journey, there is now a tool for (almost) every developer need, from app testing to ratings management. The app economy is evolving towards a service economy where developers can pick from a range of tools and services to assist them along the plan – develop – market journey. But best practices are yet far from clear.
Third-party developer services, ranging from user analytics, location APIs, bug-tracking tools, app-store optimisation services, and cross-promotion networks are, today, vying for mindshare among developers. Developer Economics 2013 aims to identify the most popular developer services among these and measure their Developer Mindshare. Furthermore we aim to understand the reasons developers choose the services they do and how they rate them across range of key performance indicators (KPIs), such as reliability, availability across platforms and ease of integration within an app.
The right tools for building an app business
Developer Economics 2013 is benchmarking best practices in a variety of developer tools sectors:
Which tool should you use and which one should you trust?
These sectors are becoming increasingly crowded with new entrants while merger & acquisition activity is changing the landscape almost on a monthly basis. The tools and services benchmarked in this survey are becoming the building blocks of modern apps and Developer Economics 2013 aims to establish best practices for the key developer tools sectors across the developer journey.
Developers are often at a loss when it comes to selecting the right tool or partner among the hundreds of services available to them. Cost is just one variable in the selection process but quite often, it is not the most crucial. The reliability of a service, the regional reach, key metrics (such as eCPM or fill rates), as well as the flexibility to adapt to the developer’s needs are sometimes more important than cost, particularly when developers invest time, money and resources to integrate a third-party service with their apps.
Developer Economics 2013 aims to assist developers with the selection process by benchmarking a number of third-party tools and services across a range of KPIs.
We are also helping third-party tool and service providers receive valuable information on how developer rate their services and their key decision criteria when selecting a service. If you’re a tools vendor being benchmarked, now is the time to spread the word to your developers.
If you are a developer your input into this research is very valuable to us and we’d like to invite you to take the survey.
Feedback welcome, as always
– Andreas
For the past three years VisionMobile has surveyed developers around the world to gain insight into why they make the choices they do. The result has been a series of Developer Economics Reports. The third report in the series, Developer Economics 2012: The New Mobile App Economy, focuses on five main areas: The redefinition of mobile ecosystems, developer segmentation, revenues vs. costs in the mobile economy, app marketing and distribution, and regional supply vs. demand of apps. It’s an excellent read for anyone interested in development trends and the mobile app economy. Plus, it’s free and who doesn’t like that? You can download it here. Don’t have time to read the whole report? You’re in luck, my friend, because the fun starts after the report goes out.
VisionMobile’s Matos Kapetanakis does a particularly great job visualizing all the of interesting tidbits of information they garner from the reports into easy to digest infographics. The infographic below presents the most popular platforms for mobile developers, which screens developers are currently targeting, most profitable vs. most expensive mobile platforms and regional demand vs. supply of apps.
Big thanks to VisionMobile for providing the infographic. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Happy hacking,
Kate Lyons, COO
@katelyons3
apkudo 