How much mobile application developers earn on their projects, and what is the average number of studios, the organizers of the ADC conference told in their extensive research (the same guys conduct GDC).
A little below we give a slightly abbreviated version of it in Russian. The original can be found here.
So, during the survey it turned out that the majority of developers still prefer to develop for iOS – 81%. Oriented in any way on Android is noticeably less – 68%. Surprisingly, the number of developers creating programs for Windows Phone turned out to be relatively high – 37%.
As a rule, they work on mobile projects alone. Among the respondents working on applications full-time, there were 35% of them. 31% of developers work in teams of 2 to 10 people. In medium-sized studios (11-50 employees), slightly less than a quarter of all respondents work – 19%. Interestingly, 56% of developers work on their own applications and publish them independently. 29% of respondents work “For a salary”, 15% of developers work under the order.
Despite the relatively large number of single developers and, it turns out, the popularity of such a model, they earn little. 70% did not earn anything on their latest app, 12% earned from $1 to $499 and only 4 respondents claimed revenue of more than $20 thousand. The number of developers working in small studios and not earning anything from applications is much less – 46%.
In general, according to the survey, the situation looks like this: 49% of developers have not earned anything on their application, 11% have earned almost nothing ($1 – $999). Another 11% earned between $1,000 and $9999. Those whose application brought a profit of more than $ 50 thousand turned out to be only 18%.
The industry is young. The majority of developers (33%) came to the mobile industry recently – a year, two years ago. Experienced, with an experience of 3-6 years, slightly less – 31%.
Most mobile developers create games specifically.
The most popular distribution model (50%) is paid, 49% of respondents earn on IAP, 40% work with advertising and 33% pay for the creation of applications from third-party companies.
The developers call the paid model the most profitable direction for themselves. The same number also highly appreciates the profitability of the IAP. But advertising satisfies only about 10% of developers.
The App Store brings the most money to developers. 63% of respondents spoke in his favor. Google Play was noted as the most profitable by 12% of developers. In third place in terms of money is the Amazon App Store.
The main problem most developers call the low findability of applications. In their opinion, the markets today are oversaturated with content (including low-quality).
The developers called the high level of piracy the second serious problem. 27% of respondents suffered from it. However, only 7% had real statistics.
Some of them have lost quite significantly due to piracy. For example, one of the respondents stated that out of more than 8 million downloads, 1.5 million were pirated (they were mainly carried out in Russia and China). Another developer noted that on Android – 90% of IAPs are fake.
About 250 mobile application developers took part in the survey conducted by the APD organizers.
A source: http://www.adconf.com