“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.”
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.
& this is somehow a suprise? Naysayers? WHERE ARE YOU!!!!! ZuneTang? Anyone?
I’ll only point out that share price-wise Apple is making almost no gains at all and has in fact gone negative over the last three months. It appears as though that profit growth has done nothing for shareholders. So, I’m only saying that whatever gains Apple is making as a company doesn’t translate to anything beyond that. The doubts about Apple’s future still remain. In fact, earlier today Apple investors were warned about their need to worry about the Galaxy S III considerably harming iPhone sales. Just saying that nothing has changed for the better no matter what the charts say.
you do a lotta “just saying”…it’s like you’re apologizing for your analysis.
What ‘doubts’ about Apples future?
They can buy RIMM 25 times over with their cash.
They are a mature company with a huge retail presence.
They are the most valuable company on the planet.
Doubts? If you have doubts about Apple, you need to seek help.
your consistent whining about short term aapl pps movement shows that you know little about the history of this stock and less about its drivers.
I was following along until it said that BlackBerry app makers make more than iOS developers. that makes no sense at all. why would app developers be leaving BlackBerry if they were making more money there? since this is averages, the only thing I can think of is they are taking the total number of apps and dividing them by the number of developers and coming up with a dollar-per-app figure. since iOS has vastly more apps, it comes out as a smaller dollar amount.
Just so.
“BlackBerry developers generate, on average, 4% more revenue per app-month than iOS developers . . . .”
What?? I agree with you, Zmarc. This simply cannot be true!
Blackberry has, let’s say only 1000 developers.
Blackberry has sold, let’s say 6 million App using pieces of hardware.
It stands to reason that fewer developers would get more money from App sales to these captive App users.
6 million X 2 Apps each X 1000 developers = about 12 million sales per developer.
The fewer the developers, the bigger the bigger the piece of the pie.
Sad what is happening to RIM, at least they didn’t rip anyone off like Google. Would rather see that fate hit Samsung or Google.
RIM’s demise just shows how difficult it is to develop a true, good mobile OS to compete with iOS. If Google hadn’t copied iOS so blatantly it would not be anywhere near Apple.
Wait a minute, every “ANALYST” and “REPORTER” is saying that google is beating apple…..
lol
In your face google and your band of copiers.
Android is King!
King of the Road. (Apologies to Roger Miller)
“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.”
That’s a curious bit of information. I think the wording isn’t quite right. It’s not that developing for iOS costs more, it’s that iOS developers put more care and design and content into their apps which ends up costing more as they produce a higher quality app.