Top 10 Appstores Worldwide

More and more appstores are coming online every month. Most publicity is about the Apple Appstore, Android Market and maybe Blackberry World and OVI. We thought it would be interesting to try to rank those appstores, including the independent ones. The figures are based on press releases, our own data from appstores, discussions with operators and handset manufacturers, and a few guestimates.

1. Apple Appstore
Recently announced 10 billion downloads across iPhone, iPad and iPod. An incredible figure that few would have predicted before the iPhone launch. Apple were the first to get mobile downloads into the mainstream and are still reaping the rewards.

2. Google’s Android Market
Over 2,7 billion downloads to date. With the ever growing number of Android handset models available, their download rates are increasing, we wait to see if they can catch Apple.

3. China Mobile Market
Although it just launched in September 2010, this is now believed to be the world´s third biggest appstore, based on the number of downloads in December 2010.

4. DoCoMo
DoCoMo has offered apps through i-mode for years and was the largest appstore prior to the iPhone era. With 40 million active customers, they are still one of the biggest appstores.

5. Nokia OVI
Despite the bad press, Nokia OVI continues to perform well, with rapid growth across the base and over 3 million downloads per day. Although,this includes any digital content, such as wallpapers, widgets and games.

6. Mobile9
Mobile9  doesn’t generate much publicity, but with twice the traffic of Getjar and more free copyright protected apps than anywhere else, this is an interesting one to follow.  Including ringtones, wallpapers, etc, they now claim over 11 billion downloads, including digital content other than apps.

7. Getjar
Frequently reported as the world largest independent appstore with apps for all device platforms available, including iPhone (providing links to the iTunes store), Android, J2ME, Symbian, Blackberry and more. The independent store counts 1.66 billion downloads up to date.

8. Mobango
For long Mobango was a strong contender to Getjar, with a community based approach. After running out of cash, Mobango was acquired in 2010, so maybe there will be another boost?  They report 750M downloads.

9. Blackberry World
RIM will tell you it’s about quality and not quantity. Despite over 50 million active devices the appstore downloads from Blackberry World are pretty low. Lately though, figures have been picking up. Blackberry World reports millions of downloads per day rather than total number of downloads but our estimate based on this is a total of somewhere between 500-700m downloaded apps since launch.

10. Verizon Wireless V Cast Apps

Verizon Wireless have continued to go their own way, with a combination of closed portal (V Cast) and openness, giving access to the Android Market. V Cast is believed to provide by far the biggest carrier appstore in the US.

Others include Vodafone 360, Telefonica/O2 mstore, Orange Application Shop, 3 App Store, AT&T AppCenter, Sprint, T-Mobile, TeliaSonera, Windows Phone Marketplace, Palm App Catalog, Samsung appstore, Sony-Ericsson Playnow, HTC, PocketGear, Mobilerated, Zed, Jamba, Buzzcity, Opera, Facebook, Cydia (Apple Jailbreak appstore), Cellmania, Handmark, Javaground, Mobiles24, OnMobile, Ondeego

We also expect initiatives from Amazon, LG, Lenovo, Mozilla, WAC (Wholesale Application Community), Sun/Oracle Java, Acer, Asus and more.

Tell us what you think!

How much does it cost to develop a mobile app on iPhone, Android and other platforms?

The most frequently asked question we hear about mobile app development is: "How much does it cost to develop a mobile app?"

The easiest way to answer will be with a counterquestion such as "How much does it cost to develop a website?" But this clearly is not very helpful. Although it is a difficult question to respond to we will make an attempt to give our clients and partners the answer they are entitled to.

The budgets quoted here are based on the costs of outsourced development. Our experience and feedback from clients is that this is almost always cheaper than in-house development when taking into account total costs of internal resources including specification, wireframes, design, planning, development, several delivery iterations and quality assurance.

1. Developing an app for iPhone only

iPhone is the easiest platform to develop for to start with. The UI is well defined, the development tools are great for creating apps with basic content and web feeds and the more advanced functionalities are well documented. More advanced iPhone apps with back-end integration, non-standard animations and apps with a lot of media handling require completely different development skills and therefore developers with many years of programming experience.

Budget for:

• Simple apps: 10-20.000 euro
• Average cost of branded apps: 30.000 euro
• Advanced apps 60.000+ euro

The costs of iPad apps are currently slightly higher as they require even more finishing work on the UI.

2. Developing an app for Android only

Developing good looking Android apps is considerably more difficult than iPhone apps. The main reason is that the SDK provides less default UI components which means that you can basically make the apps look however you want (more about this in a separate blog). In addition to this, Android is more designed for developers with several years of experience in programming Java, whereas iPhone requires very little to start with. For more advanced apps and games the complexity is the same or you might actually consider Android to be purer. Furthermore there are differences in the development language. Android has more fragmentation as there are currently 10 handset manufacturers with over 80 devices that use Android in comparison to only one for iPhone. There are also 4 different screen resolutions (starting at 240x320), more input mechanisms (e.g. Qwerty keyboards) and multiple OS versions that need to be supported. Therefore the QA period is usually about 1-2 weeks longer for Android and more resource intensive.

Budget for:

• Simple apps: 15-25.000 euro
• Average cost of branded apps: 40.000 euro
• Advanced apps 60.000+ euro

3. Developing for Blackberry only

The complexity and cost of developing for Blackberry are similar to Android. Some of the challenges to face are the many OS versions currently running, the range of screen resolutions and the requirement to cover both touch screen and Qwerty keyboards.

Budget for:

• Simple apps: 15-25.000 euro
• Average cost of branded apps: 40.000 euro
• Advanced apps 60.000+ euro

4. Cross platform development for iPhone and Android

With normal coding standards there is very little synergy between Android and iPhone development and few developers that can develop for both in a proficient manner. This means that most of the time the costs are the same for the second platform as for the first platform, excluding functional specification. Even the user flows and designs are different since Android uses the menu key and back button differently and supports multitasking on all devices.

There are various different ways to reduce the cost of cross platform development (see our blog next week on this subject). During the last couple of years Golden Gekko has taken on this challenge and tried all methods. We have finally developed our own framework for more efficient development of native apps for each platform. This currently reduces the average cost by more than 30% for the second platform but the goal is to fall below 50% in the long term and at the same time vastly reduce ongoing maintenance costs. In some cases we were already able to do so by compromising on user experience and functionality.

Budget for:

• Simple apps: 20-37.000 euro
• Average apps: 58.000 euro
• Advanced apps: 100.000+ euro

5. Other platforms

• WebOS (Palm) and other Web Runtime platforms (JIL, Opera, OVI, etc) – Budgets are similar to iPhone development to cover one platform and comparable to Android to launch web based apps on multiple platforms

• Windows Mobile – Budgets are similar to iPhone to support one OS version (e.g. 6.5) as Microsoft provides great development tools and closer to Android for multiple OS versions

• Symbian – The 2nd most complex platform for development due to lack of skilled developers, slightly out of date SDK and complexity of e.g. memory management . This means that the budgets are currently 30% higher than e.g. Android

• Java ME – Budgets are similar to Android with the platforms used by Golden Gekko but with higher QA cost depending on the number of target devices for each market

• Meego/Qt – Too early to tell but we believe budgets will be similar to Android

• Samsung Bada – The most complex platform to develop for due to lack of maturity of the SDK. We currently recommend using Java ME on Samsung Bada phones

Update version:

For an updated version of this blog please visit:
http://goldengekko.blogspot.com/2011/04/update-what-is-cost-of-developing.html

Yankee Group Predicts $4.2 Billion Mobile App Gold Rush by 2013

The appstore market keeps booming. iTunes appstore is now showing the top apps by earnings in a separate category which gives you an indication of which apps generate top dollars and to no ones surprise 80% of the top apps are games and only a few major players (EA, Gameloft, etc) as well as a few independent development houses are making money. We believe that the forecast by Yankee Group is too optimistic in terms of direct premium revenue. One of the reasons is that customers overestimate their spend on apps but also the number of great apps available for free. According to our estimates only a few hundred or less than 1% of the apps on the iTunes appstore generates a positive return to the developer. So is mobile apps a big bubble?

The answer is definitely no. There is a much bigger story. In addition to entertainment (games), apps are used for marketing, information, productivity, communication, networking and much more so the overall value to mobile operators, advertisers, consumers and businesses is much bigger. According to Strategy Analytics approximately 20% of all apps downloaded to date in 2009 have been to an iPhone or iPod which makes the total number of downloads over 5Bn. This is almost 1 download per inhabitant globally. Amazing figures and yet they will continue to grow.

Read the full pressrelease by Yankee Group here