The Smartphone App Economy In 2012: Report

Third Party Software on mobile phones, or ‘Apps‘ for applications, have been one of the main reasons for the mainstream success of smartphones in the past few years. Because of the wide range of apps offered, platforms like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android grew vastly popular. After Apple’s App Store, Nokia’s (then) Ovi Store and Google’s (then) Android Market, others followed suit too with the Blackberry, BADA and Windows Phone Marketplace. Today, we are looking at an interesting infograph from Vision Mobile, which shows us how the App Market has changed from 2011 to 2012.

Vision Mobile’s Developer Economies 2012 Report gives some interesting insights on the popular mobile platforms out there for developers.
Mindshare Index of the Top Platforms being used (2011 vs 2012)

As you can see, Android rules in terms of Mindshare amongst developers. This means most developers are using, developing or contemplating developing apps for Android. Further, their Mindshare has jumped from 67% to 76% in the last year. Just on their heels is iOS, with a jump in Mindshare from 59% to 66% in the past year. Microsoft’s Windows Phone jumped very slightly from 36% to 37%. The biggest loser was RIM’s Blackberry, with a fall from 46% in 2011 to just 34% Mindshare in 2012.

When looking at the various devices like phones, tablets and traditional PC’s and laptops, we can see that by far the most popular platform is the smartphone. However, tablet devices too are receiving a lot of developer interest, especially iOS Tablets or iPads. This has been touted as ‘The Narrowing Gap Between Screens’.

Interestingly, the cost to develop an app on each platform has been graphed. As you can see, an iOS App is the most expensive to develop, costing an average of $27,463 to develop an app. Android follows with an average cost of $22,637. Blackberry apps cost the least to develop, at $15,181 an app. However, despite this cost difference, Android and iOS are seeing exponentially more developer interest than Blackberry, which is telling.

The report can be downloaded in its entirety from here. Do let us know what you think of the report in the comments below.

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