The Application Development Market Will Grow to $US100bn in 2015

The development service market today is already twice as big as the app download market.

The market for app development services, including application creation, management, distribution and extension services, will grow in value to 100 billion in 2015. In only a year and a half after the launch of the Apple App Store the application developer market overtook the app download market in revenue size.

App development project revenue

The number of applications developed by third party application developers represents 66% of all applications. This share will increase over the next years as more and more companies want to publish applications but don’t have the resources in-house.

Most developers started out as publishers, but the increased level of competition in the main app stores, along with high failure rates, made more and more application developers alter their business model. Concentrating on developing applications for third parties, as opposed to creating their own applications, was seen as a more profitable business alternative.

Today most app project revenue is generated from app creation services (concept creation, design and coding). In 2010, app maintenance, analytics, distribution and extension services constituted merely 2% of earnings. The need for additional services is growing, however, and this share will grow significantly between now and 2015. App development will still remain the core part of app project costs.

For other insights on typical app developer companies, app project sizes, margins, alternative development solutions and more look in the new research2guidance report “The Market For Mobile Application Development Services: Selling The Spades For The App Gold Diggers”, released in July 2011.

  1. Can you tell us a bit more about what kind of additional services will grow, even if just a summary? Or is this part of the report?

  2. Egle Mikalajunaite says:

    Dear Macel,

    Thank you for your question.

    As noted in the article, today most app development project revenue is generated from app creation services (concept creation, design and coding). Additional services, such as app maintenance, analytics, distribution and extension services constituted merely 2% of app project earnings in 2010. Only a minority of developers have a concrete offering of these services today, but we see a growing demand for them.

    In the report we provide a much more detailed overview of current and future status of business offerings, including regional comparison.

  3. […] mobile app development service market is today already twice as big as the app download market, and will continue to grow over the next couple of years, wich presents […]

  4. Awesome numbers! I do not think we will get a 1000 % more developers in 4 years, so let’s be smarter about how we work. It is an awesome opportunity for app developers, let’s serve these customers with high quality apps.