App development still a young man's game

App developers are still overwhelmingly young and male, and roughly half of developers are struggling to earn a sustainable living from their work, according to VisionMobile.

The app economy market analyst company has published its latest State of the Developer Nation report, based on a survey of more than 13,000 mobile, desktop, cloud and IoT app developers.

The report shows that app development remains a male-dominated industry. Just 6% of respondents to the survey were female, rising to 7% in Oceania and 10% in industry-leading North America.

It’s also a field dominated by the young. The average age of a developer is a little over 30 (34 in Oceania), and most developers have entered the industry only recently. This poses problems created by the lack of an experienced workforce to prevent mistakes being regularly made — but has the advantage that most developers don’t have families, leaving them plenty of free time with which to experiment.

Developers are meanwhile struggling to make a living wage, with 51% of mobile developers, 49% of desktop app developers, 59% of IoT developers and 43% of cloud service developers earning less than $500 per month. This excludes hobbyist developers not interested in revenues.

For mobile developers, the most popular revenue models are advertising and paid downloads, but the more lucrative option is e-commerce transactions conducted through mobile applications. Just 17% of developers relying on advertising are making a reasonable living, compared to 37% of those selling goods.

The focus for mobile developers is being influenced by the struggle for dominance between Android and iOS, with Apple’s iOS having a lock on the high end and Android dominating everywhere else, the report shows.

This situation has created a stalemate. Apple can’t afford to move downmarket without cannibalising high-end sales — leaving Android free to dominate the mid-range and low-end segments — and Android handset makers are finding it hard to compete effectively for the premium customers that are the prime target of well-funded developers and advertisers.

The report notes that Android’s growing reach means it is now too big to ignore and remains by far the most popular platform overall, targeted by 71% of mobile developers. But because iOS customers tend to be more profitable, day-to-day attention remains on iOS. Some 37% of developers target both iOS and Android, but the majority consider iOS to be their primary platform.

In good news for Microsoft following the launch of Windows 10, 44% of mobile developers reported that they plan to adopt the OS, compared to just 28% that were planning to adopt Windows 8 at the same point in the Windows 8.1 release cycle.

On the other hand, support for Windows Mobile shrank to 27% in Q2 from 30% in Q1, making CEO Satya Nadella’s decision to write off its purchase of Nokia’s device business seem very wise, the report states.

Developer support for the mobile browser has also bounced back from an all-time low a year ago, with 26% of developers supporting the browser compared to just 15% at the nadir. But only 7% consider the browser to be their primary platform.

On the desktop front, a third of developers are aiming at old versions of Windows while 8% are looking to deploy on more recent versions — enough to make Windows the dominant platform. The platform still has a 91% share of the desktop market.

But the number of developers creating apps for web browsers continues to edge up, with Chrome and Firefox being the most supported browsers.

Developer support for the cloud — particularly the public cloud — remains limited. Even Amazon Web Services, the biggest cloud by far, is only the primary platform for 16% of software developers. Some 44% of developers are instead hosting their apps on private clouds.

Despite the relative newness of the IoT, more than half of professional mobile developers sampled in the survey are also involved in the segment, with just over a quarter professionally involved and another 35% experimenting in the field as hobbyists. This is despite the fact that 26% of IoT developers still aren’t sure of their audience.

Interest in the IoT is still focused around the smart home, but industrial, retail and wearable applications are also attracting attention among developers. There is less interest in smart city technologies — despite multiple governments’ efforts to promote IoT with developers.

The report also notes that a developer’s choice of programming language is primarily driven by the target platform, but regional preferences also play a role. Many developers are fluent in multiple programming languages.

On the mobile platform, for example, Apple offers support for both Swift and Objective C, and tool chains exist for a wide range of languages. But the choice for Android developers is limited by the ultimate requirement to support the Dalvik virtual machine.

Image courtesy of Jason Rogers under CC