Market trends are vitally important for app developers, and for companies like RunRev that provide developer tools for app developers to use. We need to provide the right tools for you to use today, tomorrow, next week and next year. Since it takes time to update software, provide new features or support new platforms, we need some kind of crystal ball that will help us predict the future, stay ahead of the curve and anticipate what you are going to want in a few months’ time.
We call this crystal ball “market surveys”. They may be an annoying interruption to your day, or you may greet them eagerly as a way to express your views and expectations, but either way, if you’re an app developer it’s well worth taking a few minutes to fill them out. Like voting, this is your chance to make your voice heard, and influence the providers of important aspects of your life – namely the creators of the developer tools you use every day.
Because we believe this is important, we are again sponsoring the latest survey launched by Vision Mobile, Developer Economics 2013.
Developer Economics 2013 focuses on the best practices for the tools, services and APIs that app developers use to build, market and monetize their apps. Take the survey, have your say on your favourite tools and win prizes, including an iPhone 5 and a Samsung Galaxy SIII. The survey will soon be available in Chinese, Russian, German, French, Spanish and Korean.
A service economy develops around app ecosystems
The mobile development landscape has undergone a massive transformation since the early days of the iOS and Android platforms. In the early stages developers faced a limited supply of tools and services to assist them with crossing platforms, beautifying the UI, bridging fragmentation, integrating with ad networks or analysing user behaviour. They had to create most of the building blocks from scratch using their own means.
As mobile application development continues its growth from 100,000s to millions of apps, the rush for gold has sparked a rush for spades. Across the developer journey, there is now a tool for (almost) every developer need, from app testing to ratings management. The app economy is evolving towards a service economy where app developers can pick from a range of developer tools and services to assist them along the plan – develop – market journey. But best practices are yet far from clear.
Third-party developer services, ranging from user analytics, location APIs, bug-tracking tools, app-store optimisation services, and cross-promotion networks are, today, vying for mindshare among app developers. Developer Economics 2013 aims to identify the most popular developer services among these and measure their Developer Mindshare. Furthermore this survey aims to understand the reasons developers choose the services they do and how they rate them across a range of key performance indicators (KPIs), such as reliability, availability across platforms and ease of integration within an app.
Which tool should you use and which one should you trust?
These sectors are becoming increasingly crowded with new entrants while merger and acquisition activity is changing the landscape almost on a monthly basis. The tools and services benchmarked in this survey are becoming the building blocks of modern apps and Developer Economics 2013 aims to establish best practices for the key developer tools sectors across the developer journey.
Developers are often at a loss when it comes to selecting the right tool or partner among the hundreds of services available to them. Cost is just one variable in the selection process but quite often, it is not the most crucial. The reliability of a service, the regional reach, key metrics (such as eCPM or fill rates), as well as the flexibility to adapt to the developer’s needs are sometimes more important than cost, particularly when developers invest time, money and resources to integrate a third-party service with their apps.
Developer Economics 2013 aims to assist app developers with the selection process by benchmarking a number of third-party tools and services across a range of KPIs.
As a developer tools vendor, RunRev is keenly interested in this research. The results of this study and others like it will feed into future decisions about the direction we should take with LiveCode.
If you are a developer your input into this research is very valuable to us and we’d like to invite you to take the survey.
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