Where Do App Developers Come From?

Since the biggest technology companies and most innovations come from US, we’d be inclined to believe things are the same when it comes to developing mobile apps, however if we’ll look at the recent findings from Flurry, we’ll notice that the biggest portion – 64% of apps are produced outside US.

The study looked also at apps taking into consideration the amount of time users spend in the apps (engagement). Things are looking a little bit better this time for US, probably due to the fact that a lot of users outside of US are using apps in English and also probably due to a higher quality of US apps.

Flurry also analyzed where the apps used by people in particular countries are made and noticed that US apps are grabbing market share in most countries, 59% in US, 35% in UK, 25% in Brazil and 16% in China. China is particularly interesting because here local apps hold 64% of the market, due to culturally adjustments that are hard to be made by foreign developers.

When looking at the impact of app developers in a given country by taking the total percentage of time users worldwide spend in apps developed in that country and dividing it by the total percentage of apps developed in that country, we’ll notice that app developers from small countries like Finland, Denmark, Bulgaria, and Slovenia are taking their apps globally. The bigger the number, the greater the impact of apps developed in that country.

Angry Birds was developed by Finland based Rovio, Cut the Rope was developed by Russia-based Zepto Labs and Fruit Ninja which was developed by Australia-based Half Brick Studios, these are just 3 examples of companies outside US that had a huge success.

Three key factors suggest that the markets for apps and app development will become increasingly global:

– the distribution of apps through apps is very straightforward and the location of the developer doesn’t play a role in this

– the market is growing at a fast pace, in July of 2013, Flurry tracked 1.15 Billion monthly active devices.

– the cost of development is still relatively low, especially in countries like the Philippines, Brazil and in Eastern Europe.