Southern Metropolis Daily: China's mobile phone application developer profit less than 20%

Most mobile app developers are turning to outsourced services in the hope that they will continue.

"1 billion thanks, 25 times 1 billion thanks!" On March 3rd, Apple paid tribute to users and developers on the official website, because Apple's app store has exceeded 25 billion downloads. "In appreciation," Apple sent a $10,000 worth of points to the 250 billion downloads. It is reported that this user in Qingdao once again triggered the attention of the industry to application development.

At present, 248,000 developers around the world have contributed 550,000 apps to Apple and received more than 4 billion U.S. dollars in payments from Apple, which averaged 16,000 U.S. dollars per month. At the same time, the rise of the Android application development market has made application development a new industry. However, the current domestic developer's survival is not optimistic. On the one hand, the threshold for development continues to increase. On the other hand, a few profitable channels have become scarce resources.

Less than 20% of profitable application developers have been rapidly expanding in the smart phone market, which cannot be separated from a wide range of applications and software support, such as “Plant vs. Zombies” and “Angry Bird (Weibo)”. The application stimulates the desire of people to purchase smart terminals. Applications developers who are in the upper reaches of the mobile industry are also heroes of the IT software industry, because these applications developed by individuals or small teams, once they are popular, can bring eye-popping income. For example, the most popular "Fruit Ninja" has more than 40 million downloads and brought in more than $30 million in revenue in 2011. Among them, downloads from the Chinese market are as high as 30%.

But for most mobile developers, an application that brings in such revenue is simply a phoenix. Even if Apple brings astonishing numbers, it has not been able to hide its reality.

According to statistics released by iMedia Consulting Group at the end of last year, only 13.7% of China's mobile phone application developers achieved profitability in 2011, mainly relying on companies themselves (such as Tencent, etc.) or personally researching and developing application products to profit from advertising, resulting in losses. Up to 64.5%, only about 20.8%.

However, "The profit figure has risen to about 18% at the beginning of this year, but it is not an improvement in the environment. Instead, many individual developers and team members who can't maintain, continue to lose money, and have no capital support have withdrawn, causing changes in the numbers. "Immediate consulting president Zhang Yi said. According to reports, the total number of mobile phone application developers in China is about 1 million, of which Apple’s iOS platform is 140,000, and Google’s Android is over 700,000. Most of these developers are concentrated in Beijing and Shenzhen.

Personal developers business model Wang Jun, the head of the development team who has not yet registered a company in Shenzhen, told Nandu reporters that there are many developers like them in Shenzhen. There are only a few people in the entire team. There are two types of profitability, one is downloading. Volume brings advertisements, like some life service classes, small game applications. The other is to do outsourcing projects for companies, but the vast majority are on the edge, he admits, "more than a year after its establishment, still burning their own money."

"The survival of individual or small team developers will be more and more difficult, especially in terms of promotion and public relations, they are almost equal to zero." Zhang Yi believes that the amount paid by Apple alone has more than 4 billion US dollars, plus outsourcing, cooperative development, etc. Throughout the entire chain, the scale of the application development industry may have reached several billion yuan. After reaching the scale, the industry will begin to mature. At this time, the threshold will become higher and higher, and if there is no certain strength or capital, the probability of being eliminated is very high. high.

Wang Jun also said that unless you do something small and do some small applications such as e-books, otherwise develop a decent application, there is no 78 or 10,000 yuan investment is very difficult.

"In the Apple App Store, many of the top applications are developed by large companies. Even if you have the ability to develop a good application, if you do not have the funds to promote it, it will soon be submerged in hundreds of thousands of applications."

In addition, some developers pointed out that compared with the Apple market, the Android market situation is slightly optimistic, because there are many Android stores, users are not fixed in a store consumption.

However, the problem may be more complicated. For example, Android users are more inclined to download free applications. The application's profit model often has only built-in advertisements, but this will affect the user experience, and users complain loudly.

It is understood that Google's AdMob is the developer's main advertising profit channel (built-in ads in the application, according to the number of clicks to advertisers), AdMob policy was adjusted at the end of last year, strict investigation of malicious, false clicks, resulting in many developers Accounts were sealed off, cutting off their rare profit channels.

In fact, "the profit channel problem has caused the application developers to change in the business model." Zhang Yi said that in the past many independent application developers turned to outsourcing services. For example, many large companies need to promote their products and service their own customers through mobile applications. “The market in this area is growing rapidly and the profits are high. For developers who cannot get or don’t want to take ventures, at least Let them stay."