VisionMobile: What apps are the most profitable to develop?

The income of mobile developers is a matter of concern to everyone. Vision Mobile's data found that half of the app developers who aspire to earn income from apps cannot obtain sustainable income, that is, they are below the poverty line of app development, which is $500 per month per app. Of course, the actual poverty line varies depending on the region and platform. For example, for a developer in San Francisco, this amount of money is not enough to sustain himself; while in Bangalore, it is a considerable income.

Here, VisionMobile continues to analyze this issue and deducts the top 5% of the data. Individual developers earn much less than those who develop for clients There is a big difference between developers who work alone and those who develop for clients. These developers who develop for clients may be direct employees or they may have received an order for the development of an APP. Developers who develop apps for themselves earn only 30% of the income of employed developers. Of course, the income obtained by developing apps for others or companies is not the income obtained by the application itself, but the income earned by the developer from the development. After excluding individual developers, the APP outsourcing development market varies greatly due to different types of customers. The average monthly income of IT services and gaming departments is $1,500, which is less than half of the income of developing apps for banking and financial clients. The average income of real estate industry app development is more than $5,000. In the game, software and IT industries, the income of these apps mostly comes from the sales of the apps themselves, while banking and real estate apps are mostly supporting products of these industries, and these incomes are difficult to be linked to the income of apps. It is worth noting that in these industries, a few excellent developers will raise the overall average level.

Communication & social network APPs lead in revenue After deducting 5% of the top APPs in revenue, analyzing the revenue of different types of APPs, it is found that the revenue performance of communication & social applications such as Skype and Whatsapp is better than the average level. The monthly revenue is 20% higher than the second-best medical and health industry APP. These social applications have a wide demand, network effects, and a considerable number of users, while tool applications are more differentiated. These tool applications mostly reflect the long-tail user needs.

The higher the investment, the greater the return . This is also true for APP developers. An APP that takes 7-12 months to develop earns 11 times more revenue than an APP that takes less than 30 days to develop.

The above data is for all developers and does not take into account the differences in platforms. If we compare the input-output ratio of Android and iOS platforms, we will find that the overall return on iOS is slightly better.

There are huge differences between countries US developers earn 40% more than UK developers and almost 5 times more than Chinese developers; of course this is related to the size of each country's market, but many developers' apps target the global market. For example, 40% of South American developers found that demand for their apps came from North America. Obviously, this is related to the pricing levels of developers in different countries. Developers in developing countries can promote their apps at more competitive prices because of the low cost of living.

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