Mobile devices are now found everywhere, nobody who has teenaged – or younger children – can deny they live in a highly-connected world.  Older people are also engaged, finding the additional functionality of devices they bought purely as phones irresistible.   Thus, observing commuters going to work on a train bus in morning, you will see the majority of them are reading he screens of their mobile phones and tablets instead of reading newspapers, books and magazines as they would have a few years ago.

Just as the internet started a revolution at the end of the last century, mobile applications continue to change society. Mobile device technology has offered opportunities for app developers to combine internet concepts such as web surfing and social media with more mundane functions like making telephone calls and taking photographs.  A single device which most people in the population now own integrates these functions

At December 2017, the Google’s Android app store has over 3 million apps. The manufacturers of mobile devices have made powerful hardware and flexible software that integrates the basic phone, camera, internet, and location functions that can be extended by third party developers.

On average, there are more than 30 thousand new apps submitted to the iTunes App store alone each month and still more written for competing platforms such as Android and Windows. By mid 2017, around 130 billion apps had been downloaded from the Apple App store worldwide and approximately 65 billion apps had been downloaded from Google Play.

Some 71% of global mobile developers target Android, while iOS holds a 55% Developer Mindshare and HTML5 (the mobile web) is in third place with 37% of mobile developers using HTML5 as a platform and an additional 15% of app developers using HTML5 via hybrid apps or HTML5-to-native tools.

There are a number of reasons why Android and HTML5 are increasingly beating iOS in popularity with developers. HTML5 apps can be easily ported to multiple platforms, and less-expensive Android smartphones have given the platform a large and increasing lead in overall installed base. iOS apps still generate far more cash per app, however.

Growth in direct revenues from the app stores is slowing. As these direct revenues are preferred sources of income for the Hobbyists, Explorers and Hunters that make up around 60% of the mobile developer population, competition for them is becoming more intense. 17% of developers who are interested in making money generate no revenue related to apps at all. A further 18% of developers make less than €100 per month and the next 17%, bringing us to a total of 52%, make less than €1000 per month.

Industry Trends

  Trends
Consumers More and more business individuals and enterprises are interested in development of website and mobile application together. For that tasks they need two performers often, that not very convenient and effective way.
Technology Android and HTML5 are increasingly beating iOS in popularity with developers, iOS apps still generate far more cash per app, however.
Despite the relative immaturity of IoT platforms, mobile developer interest is high – 53% of mobile developers were already working on some kind of IoT project
Mobile Applications The good news for consumer app developers is that 3 of their top 5 favorite categories are common with enterprise app developers. It’s definitely not too late to re-focus on B2B rather than B2C sales. Also, the skills developed building consumer apps are in greater demand than ever now that more and more businesses are taking mobility seriously. This is a trend that will keep running for several years yet.

A quick look at the app stores will show a wild variety of apps. There are apps for social networking, business, music, photography, graphic design and more. Recently fitness apps have become popular as wearable extensions such as the apple watch have made these apps very attractive.

Many apps are developed to perform niche functions.  Health and Fitness apps are typical – they are written specifically to monitor heart rate, or the number of calories you have ‘burned off’ in a workout. The concept of apps on mobile devices is now widely and commonly understood.  Many people have clever ideas for apps.

Nonetheless, app development is a young industry.  While it is quite easy for an organization to have a simple website developed – they may even have the skills in house – developing an app is a much more difficult prospect, and substantially more expensive.

Although there is less requirement for businesses to have their own app compared with the need for a website, the ubiquity of mobile devices amongst their customers and employees will mean that many businesses will need to decide if an app would be useful to their business.

  • Would my business benefit from having an app? (Or is it sufficient to make our website work well on a smart phone)
  • How much will it cost to get an app?
  • How would we make money from it; what is the business case to pay for it?

There is a substantial demand for business type apps that implement the same business functions for different organizations.

Commodity apps are apps which are not built for esoteric functions, but provide widely used business functions such as ordering from a catalog. Examples include:

Brochures and Catalogues

‘Business card’

 

Social networking

Workflow

ability to order products

app describing and organization and what it does, updated automatically with the latest news

linking people with a common interest; linking businesses to their customers, allowing customers to provide feedback

passing information between people working on a project – for example a manager can sign off a piece of work on his mobile phone while travelling on a train

European Market

According to the report “Sizing the European App Economy”, The European apps market will grow from Euro 17.5 billion ($23.5 billion) in 2013 to Euro 63 billion ($86 billion) in 2018. That’s nearly a four-fold increase in five years. Most of the growth will be in contract development work – only Euro 17 billion in revenues by 2018 will come from app sales, in-app spending and advertising.

Launched today in Brussels the report also points out that while the picture looks rosy there are problems beneath the surface. Not least of the issues is that whatever success the majority of developers enjoy, 30% of the revenues on sales flow to Google and Apple.