“In the new pyramid of handset maker competition, Apple leads innovators, Samsung leads fast-followers, ZTE leads assemblers and Nokia leads the feature phone market,” Matos Kapetanakis reports for VisionMobile. “Apple has seized almost three quarters of industry profits by delivering unique product experiences and tightly integrating hardware, software, services and design. Samsung ranks second to Apple in total industry profits. As a fast follower, its recipe for success is to reach market first with each new Android release. It produces its own chipsets and screens – the two most expensive components in the hardware stack – ensuring both profits and first-to-market component availability.”

“Developers are rapidly responding to the rising popularity of tablets: our Developer Economics 2012 survey found that, irrespective of platform, more than 50% of developers are now targeting tablets, with iOS developers most likely (74%) to do so,” Kapetanakis reports. “This is a massive increase over last year, when just a third of developers (34.5%) reported targeting tablets. On the other end of the spectrum are TVs and game consoles, with fewer than 10% of developers targeting those screens.”

“BREW (Qualcomm), is in terminal decline; the rate at which developers are abandoning BREW is alarming, with 60% of developers now using BREW indicate they plan to stop using it. Bada (Samsung) is being abandoned by 49% of developers currently using the platform, paling against the duopoly in both shipments (20 million units cumulative) and platform maturity,” Kapetanakis reports. “BlackBerry (RIM) is close to becoming an endangered species, being abandoned by 41% of developers, – worse, it is being abandoned by 14% of those using it as their primary platform plan to jump ship. No acquirer of RIM is likely to invest in salvaging the BB platform. The developer exodus is a much greater and more measurable testament to the decline of BREW, Bada and BlackBerry than any other market indicator.”

VisionMoibile mobile_handsets_Q11-Q112

Kapetanakis reports, “BlackBerry comes out on top in terms of average revenue followed by iOS with nearly $3,900 per app per month. BlackBerry developers generate, on average, 4% more revenue per app-month than iOS developers, who in turn generate about 35% more than Android developers. iOS wins over Android due to superior demographics (Apple users are less price sensitive), superior content (higher ratio of paid apps to free apps), tablet domination (where per app prices are higher) and frictionless payment (400 million accounts on file with one-click payment).”

MacDailyNews Take: The sparsity of BlackBerry apps likely accounts for the high average revenue. As BlackBerry continues to hemorrhage users, iOS will become dominant in average app revenue, too.

“iOS most expensive platform to develop on at $27,000 per app. Apple’s iOS is the most costly platform to target, on average costing just above $27,000 per app, 21% more expensive than Android and 81% more expensive than Blackberry. The average app will take approximately three man-months to develop,” Kapetanakis reports. “Telco portals have seen a 47% decrease in use as a primary channel to just 3% of developers, normalized by platform. These are the same portals that used to dominate content distribution in the pre-Apple era of downloadable ringtones, wallpapers and Java applications.”

Read the full, 75-page report for more insights – available for free download – here.