Techcrunch has released the results of their 2 month Web App Survey.  Some pretty interesting results.  I’ll highlight the ones I found most interesting. First off, the good and bad news.

A quarter of the respondents have apps that see 10,000 active users or more!  That’s 20,000 apps that are seeing some fine activity.  But 30% have 100 or less users.  24,000 apps just sitting there.  First off, I’ve seen the quality (or lack thereof) of that bottom tier so I’m not too surprised.  Too many developers cranked out ill-conceived or poorly executed apps in a rush to “the gold rush.”  I’m actually more surprised that 20,000 apps are getting a fair amount of use, given the sheer number of apps and their seriously limited channels of discovery.  But then again, there have been a purported 1 billion apps downloaded, clearly some apps are getting used.  And that bottom tier begins to make even more sense when you consider the following:

It is clear by now that the mobile app market is a very different beast than many industries, having seriously limited channels of delivery and discoverability, and with that in mind it could be argued that spending gobs of money on marketing won’t yield traditional results.  But for 54% of developers to just push it out there and then sit back and see what happens seems silly.  And of course it’s probably that same 54% reported that their app costs them nothing to maintain.

The next several slides go through the number of people working full time for the app in various capacities.  75% report zero to one full time engineer (with 34% of that reporting zero).  And with that the rest make sense, full time designers; 65% don’t have one, full time marketers; 59% don’t have one, full time managers; 59% don’t have one.

Nearly 50% have just one founder.  The picture of a lone developer, working late into the night on his/her app really seems to hold true, at least half the time.  And when you account for the other 32% of founders that are reporting being a team of two, it’s not hard to see how a whopping 82% of applications are bootstrapped. Basically one or two people working together on their own dime and time to create an app.

But I’d like to close with some good news for those wishing to develop a mobile app and make it their living. Look at the following slide:

Read one way, 79% of apps are supporting 1 or more people.  Now we don’t know what being “full time staff” really means in terms of what people are getting paid, but I have to assume that the majority of these people are making a some sort of decent living.  So it can be done.  Like all statistics I’m sure there is much more of a story here, but gleaning what we can from the above I’d say that mobile app development is still a compelling proposition.

Related Posts

• Latest AT&T ad says the Droid is a dumbphone The war on maps continues as AT&T and Verizon keep pushing out their negative ads. This week we have Luke Wilson replacing peoples’ iPhone with the Verizon Droid. Users can be overheard complaining about the lack of apps and slow download speeds while longing to get their “cool” phone back.......
• LG GW620: The New Android Phone from LG The new LG GW620 is the newest offer from LG that will, for the very first time, feature the Android operating system. This release only comes a week after the announcement by the third largest mobile phone manufacturer that they will be releasing 3 new mobile phones that will......

Related Websites

• What is Debt Leverage? Leverage is a term that is often used synonymously with debt, and for this reason, it is important that people come to understand what debt leveraging actually means, and how it works in an ordinary financial transaction, such as buying a home for example. Let us suppose that you are......
• Does The Credit Crunch Affect The Number Of People Getting Central Heating? It seems that everywhere has been hit hard by the recession, but it is worth questioning the full extent of the impact. Some UK locations are coping better than others, and this is evident by those who are still paying out for home improvements despite the tighter purse strings.......

Tags: all, Analysis, App, app download statistics, app download stats, app sales statistics, app world statistics, app world stats, apps download statistics, blackberry app download statistics, blackberry app download statistics 2009, blackberry app market stat, blackberry app sales download statistics survey, blackberry app statistics, blackberry app stats, blackberry app world download statistics, blackberry app world download stats, blackberry app world statistic, blackberry app world statistics, blackberry app world stats, blackberry apps download stats, blackberry apps statistics, blackberry apps stats, blackberry appworld stats, blackberry download stats, blackberry mobile sales statistics, blackberry statistics 2009, blackberry stats app download, blog.7touchgroup.com, mobile app dev, mobile app development, mobile app download stats, mobile app sales statistics, mobile app statistics, mobile apps sales statistics, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Phones, Mobile Sofware Development, phone app statistics, phone apps download statistics, statistics, survey, techcrunch, techcrunch blackberry appworld, techcrunch surveys, Web, what are blogs?