Appcelerator / IDC: Mobile Development: 1Q 2012

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

Summary

Appcelerator and IDC surveyed 2,173 developers of Appcelerator Titanium from January 25 to January 27, 2012 about their plans and priorities for development, for an in-depth study of their responses from February 21 to February 23, a follow-up study of 484 respondents was undertaken. The research focused on their plans and perceptions of HTML5 issues, social opportunities, and developer 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 are talking about their plans to integrate HTML5 into their mobile applications this year. This quarterly report also reveals some very different ideas 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 to their social strategies in 2012 than the Facebook social graph. The relatively high position of Google in relation to Facebook is striking, given about 900 million Facebook users and the hype surrounding the company's entry into the stock exchange.
')
Finally, developers continue to move towards more mature mobile strategies: towards Acceleration and Innovation, away from the initial stage of Exploration (For more complete information about the Mobile Growth Model, read the report for the first quarter of 2011 ) The study of this quarter emphasizes that 2012 will be a key shift in platform strategies, the role that social networks will play, and how quickly we will be able to 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 apps, HTML5 will also exist in “hybrid apps” that 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 descending order of importance are: 1) deploying on a large number of platforms; 2) increase in ease of use with the help of native interfaces and 3) speed of work with their help; and 4) reducing the time to market. A single mobile application architecture, as a rule, cannot answer all these questions simultaneously.

Google's strong position to battle Facebook in social mobile war

Facebook is one of the most popular mobile social apps in the world, with 425+ millions of mobile users and a common user base approaching 900 million, it overshadows Google+ on all counts. 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 a social networking game in a mobile space flows, 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 assets (such as Google+, search, Gmail, Android, Android Market, etc.) is more important for them than the social graph of Facebook. Such a response can be rated extremely high, given the huge leadership of Facebook in the social sphere. This could turn into a big competitive advantage for Google - and a potential competitive risk for Facebook - especially given that developers believe that Google is growing faster than Facebook.

Key findings of the Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Development Report in 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 expected at the end of the 4th quarter of 2011.
• Developers are trying to understand and use the Facebook social graph . The use of the full social graph itself is valued rather low - the 8th of 11 social priorities for developers, while on the top of the use of social networks are notifications, status updates and authentication.
• The network effect of a lot of Google resources is a key strategic difference from Facebook . Google’s influence through its assets (search, advertising, YouTube, Gmail, Android, Maps, etc.) and the cumulative network effect are valued significantly higher than expected compared to Facebook, given Facebook’s enormous social leadership.
• Mobile app 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 with 27.4% in 2010, and 16.7% of respondents report that they will be focused on updating their mobile applications in 2012 compared to 9.2 % in 2010.
• Interest in Windows Phone 7 remains high . WP7 is an obvious “third number” in the OS rating according to the degree of developer interest, following Apple iOS and Google Android. A significant leap of 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 to 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 the problems of RIM decreased from 20.7% in Q4 2011 to 15.5% in Q1 2012.
• iOS continues to reign among the interests of developers . 89% of respondents said that they are "very interested" in the development for the iPhone, followed by the iPad with 88%.
• Android phones and tablets are slowly losing interest . This quarter, interest in Android phones dropped 4.7 points to 78.6%, while Android tablets lost 2.2% compared with the previous survey and now occupy only 65.9%. Although this is close to or within the margin of error, these losses show a tendency of small but stable erosion of interest in Android over the last 4 quarters, even despite the huge continuing growth in sales of Android devices.
• Location and notifications are the two main cloud services that developers want to expand their mobile initiatives. 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

Developers' interest in HTML5 took off this year, 79% of developers expressed hope that HTML5 would be useful to them when creating applications. However, a more interesting indicator is how much HTML5 developers will use in applications. For example, most of the developers in the survey plan to use 50% or less of HTML5 in individual applications, less than 6% plan pure HTML5 browser applications. Mobile applications cover a range of different architectures. Native applications consist of native code running on the device, hybrid applications 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, speeds 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 the 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 in order to create the most attractive applications that fit their tasks. This quarterly report shows that developers are clearly expressing a preference for a hybrid approach that can simultaneously meet several goals.

Android Slip

We are seeing relatively small changes in developer interest in iOS, Android, Microsoft, and other platforms relative to fourth quarter performance. However, if you look at the direction of motion, 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, took as much attention as the iPhone with the iPad. Last year, developer interest in both Android platforms began to wane, slightly from quarter to quarter, but obviously noticeably, to mark a downward trend throughout the year. We believe this is due to the ongoing fragmentation of Android, which Google seems unable to overcome, and the continued success of the iPhone and iPad. This fragmentation, in conjunction with the iPad, which continues to be sold in quantities greater than all Android tablets combined, swung the developers from Android to iOS.

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 iPhones and iPads that have created the best fiscal quarter in the company's history.

Challenge competitors

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. It is obvious that the mass media coverage of the company's problems affected the opinion of the developers (11% and 16%, respectively).

Progress of companies in their mobile maturing

In the Q1 2011 survey, 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 a multitude of applications for different operating systems.

We found that it took years for developers to fully explore all the capabilities of the mobile application environment. When we impose this opinion on the growth that we see in the number of developers awaiting the development of more than 5 applications and working for a variety of operating systems, it becomes clear that the Acceleration phase is in full swing.

Throughout the study, we have seen signs of a gradually developing market. The growing number of mobile application developers, the growing number of operating systems and supported applications, the growing size of companies that produce mobile applications - all indicate growing up. Finally, when we look at the composition of the teams creating mobile applications, we will see a 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 customer interactions, enterprises continue to face difficulties in distributing these applications among their employees and owners of enterprise-owned devices. Over the past year and a half, a new vendor class has emerged, the Enterprise App Store. At the same time, some existing suppliers of mobile device management systems (MDM) have improved their competitive capabilities and offered similar functionality. Wallpapers offer the delivery of mobile applications to a variety of devices, regardless of ownership. Amazing research results showed that, despite the youth of the market, 39% of our developers will write applications for these industrial app stores. We will look at this topic in further reports.

Mobile initiative expands due to cloud services

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% point to a location as the service of most interest to them, and 33% talk about notifications. This data echoes the information of the previous report in terms of the popularity of notifications and geolocation. We expect an increase in the number of developers accessing cloud services to improve their mobile applications due to the simplicity of their integration, as well as the inherent scalability of cloud location and notification solutions.

New social battle: the network effect of Google vs Facebook social graph

Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Developer Report, published in Q3 2011, 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 that Google+ can seize the initiative from Facebook, 68% answered that Google’s total assets (its network effect) are its trump card against the social graph of Facebook.

In the 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 the network effect of Google in the 60/40 ratio. However, IDC and Appcelerator noticed that Google’s 39% is unusually high, considering not only 900 million users and 425 million mobile Facebook users, but also the hype around the company's lingering IPO. The high index of Google is especially noteworthy due to the fact that Facebook is many times ahead of Google+ on most metrics.

The developers noticed that many observers did not notice: Google resources are often at a “real” point in time, immediately, more valuable and / or more easily integrated than the social graph of Facebook. Google offers a cumulative network effect from search, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Android, Android Market, Google Docs, AdMob and now Google+. One example of how great Google’s penetration is Google Maps, which are pre-installed on the iPhone and all Android devices, and therefore more and more integrated into iOS and Android applications. YouTube is usually integrated into mobile applications and is often listed as one of the bandwidth limiters of the mobile network. Putting more than 200 million phones and tablets on Android in 2011, Google was clearly preparing to use all these network effects - pay attention to the recently changed privacy policy that allowed the exchange of data between its services.

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

Despite all the problems and opportunities created by social networks, it is clear that in Q1 2012, developers do not feel completely possessing the knowledge or tools to fully use the social stratum in their mobile strategies. This creates tremendous opportunities — both for established players such as Facebook, LinkedIn and RenRen, as well as for their young competitors such as Google and even Apple — that creates opportunities to focus on better engaging developers in training and tools that will help their continued financial success.

Tools : 61% of developers report that their social need number one is the best tools and APIs. This shows that existing tools and APIs available to developers are either insufficient, or difficult to use 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 ways that developers use to socialize their applications, and their need for better interaction mechanisms.

Channels of marketing and discovery : 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 the social graph.

One of the most striking results of the current quarter survey compared to the Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Developer Report for the 3rd quarter of 2011 is how developers are currently using sociality in their mobile apps. 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 examples of use in Q1 2012 remain the same as in Q3 2011 and as they decrease, they are: 1) notifications, 2) status updates, and 3) authentication. Friendship requests for the application and 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 that the notifications and status updates are components of the social graph - and indeed often there is some confusion that such a social graph is in fact - it is clear that developers do not fully understand the full potential of a social graph in the sense that is most important for them - in obtaining and deeper user involvement.

The need for understanding social networks is growing - not decreasing

Due to the tremendous growth of social networks in the last two quarters, Appcelerator and IDC note that the need for a community of mobile developers for social interaction also grows with time, especially in terms of understanding the social extent of their applications. As the chart below shows, fewer respondents in Q1 2012 compared to Q3 2011 understand very well how to use social networks (24.9% and 31.0%, respectively) and more than not very well (25.5% against 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 implementing 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 virtually 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 reach without increasing costs, user consumption of data, as well as network bandwidth, as more and more application functionality switches to HTML5 browsers. In the social sphere, Facebook can have a huge lead over Google, but mobile developers see a greater potential in the Google network effect compared to the Facebook social graph. Here 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 are reporting a strong shift in 2012 — their strategies focused on market research in 2011 are moving to acceleration and innovation in 2012. At the forefront of this acceleration and innovation are HTML5 and the social mobile battle between Google and Facebook.

About Appcelerator

Appcelerator is a leading industrial, cross-platform solution with more than 1.6 million developers using this software to run more than 30,000 cloud, mobile, web and desktop applications used on more than 30 million devices every day. The company's flagship 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 industrial technologies to reduce time-to-market and development costs, increase customer numbers and profits, gain more flexibility and control. For more information, visit www.appcelerator.com .

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is a leading global provider of market information, consulting services, information technology events, telecommunications and consumer equipment. IDC helps IT professionals, executives, and investors make fact-based purchasing decisions in technology and business strategies. More than 1,100 IDC analysts provide global, regional and local expertise on technology, industry opportunities and trends in more than 110 countries. For over 46 years, IDC has provided strategic information to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a division of IDG, the world's leading technology media company, research and events. You can learn more about IDC at www.idc.com .

PS You can download the full version of the report on our website in PDF - it differs by illustrating graphs and diagrams, the text is all given above.