Taking data from the 10th edition of Developer Economics – the leading research program on software developers and the app economy – this report looks at developers who are creating applications for deployment on mobile platforms, segmenting them by what drives them to create those apps. Buy the report - vmob.me/MobileSegments

1. VisionMobile Ltd.
90 Long Acre, Covent Garden,
London WC2E 9RZ
+44 845 003 8742
www.visionmobile.com/blog
Follow us on twitter: @visionmobile
ABOUT VISIONMOBILE
VisionMobile is the leading analyst company in the developer economy, tracking mobile &
IoT developer trends via the largest, most comprehensive developer surveys worldwide.
Reaching out to 30,000 software developers incl. app (ie mobile) developers in over 150
countries, VisionMobile touches upon a wide range of sectors from Mobile and IoT to
AV/VR and Machine Learning.
We help the world understand developers and developers understand the world.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. About the Mobile Developer Segmentation Report
• The Eight Developer Segments
• The mobile developer community, by segments
• Mobile developers and the VisionMobile segments
• The mobile landscape, a vista to be explored and hunted
2. Mobile platforms for mobile developers
• A race of two horses?
• The rise of the mobile browser
• Loyalty fades as professionalism rises
• A race of two horses?
• Betting each way
• The other mobile platforms – niche players at best
3. The mobile developer in action
• Language choices and diktats
• Developers and their baggage
• Developer tools and who is using them
5. Revenue Models
Conclusion
Methodology
• Platform owners promoting subscription revenue
• Different revenue models for different people
4. All about the apps
• The mobile as a professional platform

2. ABOUT THIS REPORT
METHODOLOGY
Taking data from the 10th edition of Developer Economics - the leading research program on software
developers and the app economy – this report looks at developers who are creating applications for
deployment on mobile platforms, segmenting them by what drives them to create those apps. Mobile
developers were the poster child for the app revolution: a good idea, a few lines of code, and revenue would
flood in thanks to innovative distribution and monetisation models which have become standard across the
software industry.
The 10th edition of the Developer Economics survey reached over 21,000 respondents from 150 countries
and provides detailed data on thousands of mobile developers. The survey tracks developer experiences
across platforms, revenues, apps, languages, tools, APIs, segments and regions, allowing us to extract
information on the developer groups we’re most interested in.
In this report we look in detail at the mobile developer communities, seeing motivations map to tools and
business models, providing an insight into what applications they are creating and how they are creating them.
The Mobile Developer Segmentation addresses the following questions :
How is the mobile developer population split into goal-based segments and why are they
important?
How does that split vary across platforms, and what’s the breakdown of primary platforms
by segment?
How do different segments choose languages and tools?
How do revenue models, application categories, and audiences vary by segment?
Developer Economics 10th edition reached an impressive 21,000+ respondents from 150 countries around the world.
As such, it is the most global research on mobile, desktop, IoT and cloud developers combined ever conducted. This
report is based on a large-scale online developer survey designed, produced and carried out by VisionMobile over a
period of six weeks between October and November 2015.
From that sample 11,522 were selected at random to answer detailed questions on their role as mobile developers.
This group is the basis of our analysis throughout this report.
To minimise the sampling bias for platform distribution across our outreach channels, we weighted the responses to
derive a representative platform distribution. We compared the distribution across a number of different developer
outreach channels and identified statistically significant channels that exhibited the lowest variability from the
platform medians across our whole sample base. From these channels we excluded the channels of our research
partners to eliminate sampling bias due to respondents recruited via these channels. We derived a representative
platform distribution based on independent, statistically significant channels to derive a weighted platform distribut
BUY THE REPORT
vmob.me/MobileSegments