Apps and games have quickly become an incredibly large market for those looking to make some money on the side, and for more developers than ever it’s become a full-time job. This is great for us, as the quality of these apps and games has sharply risen over the last few years. For developers though, there’s always the decision of which platform to develop for, how to market your apps depending on platform and other such questions. VisionMobile has just completed the largest survey of mobile app developers, with some 6,000 devs taking part, to find out how Android, iOS and Windows Phone all stack up against each other.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, iOS is still the most profitable, with developers making on average around $5,200 a month, with Android coming in at $4,700 a month. Which isn’t bad to say that most apps on Android are free. Why do we call it unsurprising about iOS revenues? Well, is it fair to say that Apple users are more than prepared to pay more?
It’s no longer expected of developers to create software for just one platform any more, and as such the survey discovered that many developers will in fact use all 5 platforms. With Android and iOS taking the largest share of “primary” targets.
More developers are choosing to develop for Android, with 71% of developers already using Android, with iOS at just 56%. The Android and iOS duopoly that is present not just in smartphone sales, but app development and sales, is still strong and newcomer Windows Phone can’t seem to grasp a hold. However, out of the 6,000 developers quizzed by the survey, many of them said that Windows Phone is very much on their radar for the near future.
HTML5 has been around for a while now, and there’s more activity here than you might think, with 61% of HTML5 developers choosing to go straight to the browser, and just 27% of developers choosing to produce it in some kind of wrapper, to make it feel more like a native app. It’s interesting to see how far HTML5 has come, and the future of internet is exciting, with web apps becoming almost as useful as native ones. VisionMobile are providing the survey’s results as a free download, and it’s well worth a look if you’re a developer, or looking to get started.