Appcelerator / IDC: Mobile Development: Q1 2012

From the author : Within the framework of the Apps4All project, we translate and publish Russian reports on mobile development by VisionMobile and Appcelerator / IDC . We offer you the Russian version of the recently released report "Mobile Development: Q1 2012".

Summary

Appcelerator and IDC interviewed 2,173 Appcelerator Titanium developers from January 25 to 27, 2012 about their development plans and priorities, and a follow-up study of 484 respondents was undertaken to study their answers in depth from February 21 to 23. Studies focused on their plans and perceptions of issues regarding HTML5, social opportunities and developers' priorities in 2012 compared to 2011.

The main conclusion is that HTML5 will play an increasing role in the mobile application space in 2012, 79% of developers say they plan to integrate HTML5 into their mobile applications this year. This quarterly report also reveals some very different views among developers about the upcoming social battle between Facebook and Google. 39% of developers say that the network effect of a wide range of Google products is more important for their social strategies in 2012 than the social graph Facebook. Google’s relatively high position in relation to Facebook is striking, given about 900 million Facebook users and the hype surrounding the company's listing.

Finally, developers continue to move towards more mature mobile strategies: towards Acceleration and Innovation, away from the initial stage of Intelligence (For more information on the Mobile Growth Model, read the report for the first quarter of 2011 ) A study of this quarter emphasizes that 2012 will really become a key shift in platform strategies, what role social networks will play and how quickly we can observe these changes in the application markets.

HTML5 takes its place ...

The space of mobile applications is currently captured by native applications. However, in 2012, HTML5 will move along with native environments and take its place as a viable architecture for mobile applications. In addition to purely browser-based mobile applications, HTML5 will also exist in "hybrid applications" that will integrate both HTML5 and various "native" code. As noted in the Appcelerator / IDC Q4 2011 Mobile Developer Report, the four main priorities for mobile developers in decreasing order of importance are: 1) deployment on a large number of platforms; 2) increase ease of use with native interfaces; and 3) speed with their own help; and 4) reduction of time to market. Unified mobile application architecture, usually

Google’s strong position to battle Facebook in social mobile warfare

Facebook is one of the most popular mobile social apps in the world with 425+ million mobile users and with a total user base approaching 900 million, it outshines Google+ in all respects. One would expect Facebook to be more important for social strategies in 2012 than Google. However, mobile application developers see the world differently, which can have a significant impact on how the game of social networks flows in the mobile space, especially for the next billion social users. A study of this quarter showed that 39% of developers say that the network effect of all Google’s assets (such as Google+, search, Gmail, Android, Android Market, etc.) is more important for them than the social graph Facebook. Such an answer can be rated extremely highly, given Facebook’s tremendous social leadership. This could turn into a big competitive advantage for Google - and a potential competitive risk for Facebook - especially considering that developers believe that Google is growing faster than Facebook.

Key findings from the Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Development Report for the first quarter of 2012:

• HTML5 is becoming important for many mobile development strategies . A large number (79%) of mobile developers report that they will integrate some HTML5 elements into their applications in 2012. This is significantly more than many observers had expected at the end of Q4 2011.
• Developers are trying to understand and use the social graph of Facebook . The very use of the full social graph is valued rather low - the 8th of 11 social priorities for developers, while notifications, status updates and authentication remain at the top of the use of social networks.
• The network effect of a large number of Google resources is a key strategic difference from Facebook . The impact of Google through its assets (search, advertising, YouTube, Gmail, Android, Maps, etc.) and the total network effect are much higher than expected compared to Facebook, given Facebook’s huge social leadership.
• Mobile application development continues to accelerate in 2012 . More than half (53.7%) of respondents say that they are currently focused on accelerating their mobile strategies, compared to 27.4% in 2010, and 16.7% of respondents say that they will focus on updating their mobile applications in 2012 compared to 9.2 % in 2010.
• Interest in Windows Phone 7 remains high . WP7 is a clear “third number” in the OS ranking according to the degree of interest of developers, followed by Apple iOS and Google Android. A significant jump in attention that occurred with this operating system in the 4th quarter of 2011 continues to persist, despite the somewhat disappointing sales of devices on WP7 by the current time.
• This quarter saw another sharp drop in developer interest in the BlackBerry OS . Their attention against the background of negative news around RIM problems decreased from 20.7% in the 4th quarter of 2011 to 15.5% in the 1st quarter of 2012.
• iOS continues to reign among the interests of developers . 89% of respondents said they were “very interested” in developing for the iPhone, followed by an iPad with 88%.
• Android phones and tablets are slowly losing interest . In this quarter, interest in Android phones fell 4.7 points to 78.6%, while Android tablets lost 2.2% compared to the previous study and now occupy only 65.9%. Although this is close to or within the margin of error, these losses show a tendency towards a small but stable erosion of interest in Android over the past 4 quarters, despite the huge continued growth in sales of Android devices.
• Location and notifications are the two main cloud services that developers want to expand their mobile initiatives. The interest in cloud services is strong, and geolocation and notifications are two leading services that developers want to integrate into their mobile applications.

HTML5 is gaining momentum

The interest of developers in HTML5 soared this year, 79% of developers expressed the hope that HTML5 will be useful to them when creating applications. However, a more interesting indicator is how much HTML5 developers will use in applications. For example, most developers in the survey plan to use 50% or less HTML5 in individual applications, less than 6% plan to use pure HTML5 browser applications. Mobile applications span a range of different architectures. Native applications consist of native code that runs on the device, hybrid ones include a limited amount of native code and HTML5 for displaying content, and purely browser-based applications use HTML5 for all content display and code operation.

Each of these architectures offers different qualities, performance and reusability: none of the architectures satisfy all the requirements of developers. Therefore, developers must choose the best architecture for the tasks for which the application is being created. We believe, and developers agree with this, that there is no single architecture for mobile applications. Instead, developers should be familiar with a number of different mobile platforms to create the most attractive applications that meet their goals. This quarterly report shows that developers clearly express a preference for a hybrid approach that can simultaneously meet multiple goals.

Android glide

We are seeing relatively small changes in the interest of developers in iOS, Android, Microsoft and other platforms regarding the fourth quarter indicators. However, if you look at the direction of movement, you can identify interesting patterns. In Q1 2011, Android went head-to-head with iOS in terms of developer interest. Among Android developers, both in the format of smartphones and tablets, it took as much attention as the iPhone with the iPad. Last year, developers' interest in both Android platforms began to weaken, slightly from quarter to quarter, but obviously noticeable to indicate a downtrend throughout the year. We believe this is due to the continued fragmentation of Android, which Google does not seem to be able to overcome, and the continued success of the iPhone and iPad. This fragmentation, in conjunction with the iPad,

Good news for iOS

Compared to all other platforms, iOS continues to be the most interesting platform for developers, 89% of developers are very interested in creating applications for the iPhone and 88% for the iPad. This reflects Apple's tremendous success with the iPhone and iPad, which created the best fiscal quarter in company history.

Competitor Challenges

Also of interest are the significant shifts that we have seen in less popular platforms. HP TouchPad saw a drop in developer interest, despite a surge in sales (due to lower prices), the lack of a clear explanation of future product support no doubt influenced the opinion of the creators of the application. In addition, the RIM PlayBook and BlackBerry phones have significantly lost interest. Obviously, the mass media coverage of the company's problems influenced the opinion of the developers (11% and 16%, respectively).

Companies Progress in Their Mobile Growth

In a survey of the 1st quarter of 2011, we asked developers to describe their place in the mobile strategy - whether they are Scouts, Accelerators or Innovators. In 2010, they were clearly in the Research phase; in 2011, the majority entered the Acceleration stage. This quarter showed that the majority of respondents believe that they are in the Acceleration stage, they expect to create many applications for different operating systems.

We found that it took the developers years to fully explore all the features of the mobile application environment. When we apply this opinion to the growth that we see in the number of developers waiting to develop more than 5 applications and working for many operating systems, it becomes clear that the Acceleration phase is in full swing.

Throughout the study, we saw signs of a gradually developing market. An increase in the number of developers of mobile applications, an increase in the number of operating systems and supported applications, an increase in the size of companies issuing mobile applications - all indicate growing up. Finally, when we look at the composition of the teams creating mobile applications, we will see the growth of versatile approaches (internal development teams combined with external teams).

With the growing number of enterprises using mobile applications to communicate with employees, improve business processes and optimize interaction with customers, enterprises continue to face difficulties in distributing these applications to their employees and owners of enterprise-owned devices. Over the past year and a half, a new class of vendors has appeared, the Enterprise App Store. At the same time, some existing mobile device management system (MDM) vendors have improved their competitive capabilities and offered similar functionality. Wallpaper offers the delivery of mobile applications to a variety of devices, regardless of ownership. The amazing results of the study showed that, despite the youth of the market, 39% of our developers will write applications for these industrial application stores.

Cloud Initiative Expands Mobile Initiative

Among the cloud services that developers are most interested in in terms of expanding their mobile initiatives, geolocation and notification remain in the first two places. 35% indicate the location as the most attractive service, and 33% speak of notifications. This data echoes the information from the previous report as part of the popularity of notifications and geolocation. We expect an increase in the number of developers who turn to cloud services to improve their mobile applications - due to the ease of their integration, as well as the inherent scalability of cloud-based location and notification solutions.

New social battle: Google network effect against Facebook social graph

Published in the 3rd quarter of 2011, the Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Developer Report revealed a key fact: 66% of mobile application developers believe that Google+ can catch up with Facebook. When we delved into this question and asked the developers why they think Google+ can seize the initiative from Facebook, 68% said that Google’s total assets (its network effect) are its trump card against the social graph Facebook.

In a Q1 2012 study, we asked developers what was more important for their social strategies in 2012: the Google network effect or the Facebook social graph. At first glance, it might seem that Facebook’s social connections outplayed Google’s network effect in a 60/40 ratio. However, IDC and Appcelerator drew attention to the fact that Google’s rate of 39% is unusually high, considering not only 900 million users of Facebook and 425 million mobile users of Facebook, but also the hype around the company's protracted IPO. Google’s high index is especially noteworthy given that Facebook is many times ahead of Google+ in most metrics.

The developers noticed something that many observers did not notice: Google’s resources are often “real” instantly, immediately, more valuable and / or more easily integrated than the social graph Facebook. Google offers the combined network effect of search, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Android, Android Market, Google Docs, AdMob and now Google+. One example of how great Google penetration is with Google Maps, which are preinstalled on the iPhone and all Android devices, and therefore are increasingly being integrated into iOS and Android applications. YouTube is usually integrated into mobile applications and is often cited as one of the limitations of mobile network bandwidth. With over 200 million Android phones and tablets installed in 2011,

The main social need for developers is the best mechanism for attracting

Despite all the problems and opportunities that social networks create, it is clear that in the 1st quarter of 2012, developers do not feel fully possessed of knowledge or tools for the full use of the social layer in their mobile strategies. This creates huge new opportunities - both for established players such as Facebook, LinkedIn and RenRen, and for their young competitors such as Google and even Apple - it creates opportunities to focus on the best way to attract developers to training and tools that will help their further financial success.

Instruments: 61% of developers report that their number one social need is the best tools and APIs. This shows that the existing tools and APIs available to developers are either insufficient or their use is difficult and / or not fully understood.

Integration Strategy : 51% of developers report that they need to understand how best to integrate social networks into their applications. For the most part, developers are left on their own in this understanding, as evidenced by the relatively limited methods that developers use to socialize their applications, and their need for better interaction mechanisms.

Marketing and discovery channels: 46% report that they would like to learn more about how to use social interaction as a channel of marketing and discovery, which is one of the most important needs of developers in a social graph.

One of the most striking results of the survey of the current quarter compared to the Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Developer Report for the 3rd quarter of 2011 is how developers currently use sociality in their mobile applications. The social part has largely remained unchanged over the past six months and is relatively simple compared to the overall potential of social networks. The three most popular use cases in the 1st quarter of 2012 remained the same as in the 3rd quarter of 2011 and in decreasing order of magnitude: 1) notifications, 2) status updates, and 3) authentication. Friendship requests for the application and the use of the most complete social graph are in 8th place in the 1st quarter of 2012, the result is almost identical to the 3rd quarter of 2011. Although it can be noted

The need for understanding social networks is growing - not decreasing

Due to the huge growth of social networks in the last two quarters, Appcelerator and IDC note that the need for the mobile community in social interaction also grows over time, especially in terms of understanding the social extent of their applications. As the chart below shows, fewer respondents in the 1st quarter of 2012 compared with the 3rd quarter of 2011 “very well” understand how to use social networks (24.9% and 31.0%, respectively) and more “not very good” understand (25.5% versus 18.5 % respectively).

This once again underlines the need for social providers to develop education and interaction mechanisms for developers, helping them better implement social promises in their applications. By realizing this, social providers will benefit from deeper interaction and deeper integration with mobile applications that continuously change people's behavior and influence business models in almost all industries.

Final word

2012 marks a new era in mobile competition. HTML5 plays a major role, manifesting itself in a wide range of holistic application strategies, including native, hybrid, and HTML5 applications. This, in turn, greatly affects the number of mobile operating systems that developers can cover without raising costs, user data consumption, and network bandwidth, as more and more application functionality switches to HTML5 browsers. In the social sphere, Facebook can have a huge margin from Google, but mobile developers see greater potential in the network effect of Google in comparison with the social graph Facebook. There are huge opportunities for existing and new social players to help mobile developers, who feel a lack of knowledge and tools for the full realization of social energy in their applications. Finally, developers report a major shift in 2012 - their strategies focused on market research in 2011 are moving towards acceleration and innovation in 2012. At the forefront of this acceleration and innovation is HTML5 and the social mobile battle between Google and Facebook.

About Appcelerator

Appcelerator is a leading industry-wide, cross-platform solution with over 1.6 million developers using this software to run over 30,000 cloud, mobile, web and desktop applications used on more than 30 million devices every day. The flagship of the company, Appcelerator Titanium, is the only mobile cloud platform for fully native, cross-platform applications and HTML5 web development with a single code base. Appcelerator customers can use their existing skills and open industry technologies to reduce time to market and development costs, increase customer numbers and profits, and gain greater flexibility and control. For more information, visit www.appcelerator.com.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is a leading global provider of market information, advisory services, developments in the world of information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology. IDC helps IT professionals, executives, and investors make factual purchases in technology and business strategies. Over 1,100 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise in technology, industry opportunities, and trends in more than 110 countries. For over 46 years, IDC has been providing strategic information to help our customers achieve their key business goals. IDC is a division of IDG, a leading global company in technology media, research and events. You can learn more about IDC on the site.www.idc.com .

PS You can download the full version of the report on our website in PDF - it is distinguished by illustrative graphs and charts, the entire text is given above.