5:04 AM
Xohaib Imran
In fact, mobile app developers are weighing seven business models, the most prevalent still being application store sales with 59 percent of respondents using this model. Other models include advertising (43 percent), in-app purchase (42 percent), brand loyalty and engagement (34 percent), mobile commerce (26 percent), subscription (26 percent), and coupons programs (10 percent).
The fastest growing business model is mobile commerce. In a similar survey last year, only 14 percent of mobile app developers had mobile commerce as part of their business model mix. Today, one out of four have mobile commerce, a growth of 86 percent.
Applications are also maturing and becoming more complex, evolving from simple content-based applications to applications that make use of location, social and cloud services to transactional applications that tap the power of mobile commerce, according to the study.
"As the customer experience evolves, so does application sophistication, customer expectations, business transformation opportunities and the underlying business models," the study concludes.
On the tablet front, the survey found that Androids and, to a lesser degree, the BlackBerry PlayBook are gaining mindshare among developers at a faster rate than the market-making iPad.
Seventy-four(74) percent of respondents said they are "very interested" in developing for Android tablets, up from sixty-two(62) percent last year. Twenty-eight(28) percent are eyeing the BlackBerry PlayBook, up from sixteen(16) percent last year. The iPad leads with eighty-seven(87) percent, only a 3 percent increase from last year. Web OS tablet interest remained flat.
So who is going to host these Android applications? The survey found that eighty-two(82) percent of respondents are interested in distributing their apps via the Android market, thirty-seven(37) percent in Amazon's new Android Appstore, 13 percent on Verizon (VZ) VCAST, and 9 percent on GetJar.
The survey's bullish Android results, however, could have been affected by the Android tablet hype at this year's CES in Las Vegas. More than 85 Android tablets stole the show, and Appcelerator and IDC surveyed mobile app developers only a week after the CES.
