A Collection of Mobile Application Development Statistics: Growth, Usage, Revenue and Adoption

The growth of the mobile application industry shapes how we live and work every day. In order to understand the influence of applications on our future we must assess both current statistics and those projected for the following years. Below we have gathered a number of statistics that demonstrate the extent to which applications are impacting the modern world and how they will continue to be.

Mobile Application Revenue

The statistics in the first two sections are drawn from App Annie’s Mobile App Forecast report. App Annie is a business intelligence and analyst firm. App Annie utilized an algorithm based off over 10,000 sources and 1 million apps to determine the trajectories of current and predicted results.

• 20%: Percentage compound in annual growth rate from 2015 to 2020 of global revenue produced from apps. App Annie predicts revenue to grow from $41.1 to $101.1 billion by 2020
• $0.8: Increase in revenue generated per device from 2015 to 2020, with 2015’s revenue per device at $15.42 to 2020’s $16.22
• 85%: Percentage of global application market revenue generated from games in 2015, totaling $34.8 billion, projected to increase to $74.6 billion in 2020
• $20.1 billion: Increase in global revenue generated from other applications excluding games, reflecting a drastic rise from $6.3 billion in 2015 to $26.4 billion in 2020
• $44.8 billion: Predicted iOS annual gross mobile application revenue in 2020, doubling in value from its 2015 revenue to remain the highest grossing single store
• $55.7 billion: Combined annual gross application revenue of third-party Android stores and Google Play, increasing from $18.3 billion in 2015

Application Usage

The results presented surrounding application usage draw from App Annie’s 2015 report and the Ericsson Mobility Report (2015) which utilized a combination of macroeconomic and user trends, market maturity, technology development expectations and national or regional industry analyst reports among other techniques to predict its results.

•  3.5 billion: Predicted increase in number of smartphone user’s from 2015’s 2.6 billion to 2020’s 6.1 billion users
• 173.1 billion: Increase in global application downloads from 111.2 billion in 2015 to 2020’s 284.3 billion downloads
• 46%: Predicted percentage of growth in iOS application downloads from 2015 to 2020, totaling at an estimated 35.2 billion downloads in 2020
• 158%: Estimated percentage of growth in Android application downloads from 2015 to 2020, finishing at 80.3 billion downloads
• 63%: Percentage growth of global time spent in apps on Android phones from 2014 to 2015

Investment and Corporate Attitudes

Statistics from this category are based off of Red Hat’s 2015 Mobile Maturity survey. This survey gathered information from 200 US and European IT decision makers whose companies total over 2,500 employees to gauge attitudes about mobile applications.

• 90%: Percentage of those surveyed who said that their company has a fully or partially implemented mobile app strategy with 60% reporting a review process for alteration when necessary
• 74%: Percentage of all IT decision makers interviewed who reported the return on investment from mobile app integration proved the value of implementation
• 79%: Percentage of all U.S. companies surveyed that reported mobile apps contributing to their success
• 90%: Percentage of survey respondents who reported that investment in mobile apps would increase in 2016, with the average expected growth of 24% in investment

Mobile Application Development and IT Careers

The statistics provided below are drawn from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Developer Economics State of the Developer Nation report. And VisionMobile’s Developer Economics survey collected information through online surveying and interviews from over 8,000 application developers from 143 countries globally.

• 57.4%: Percentage of growth in employment of software application developers from 2010 to 2020 reported by the US Bureau
• 40%: Percentage of professional application developers who reported Android as their primary platform
• 37%: Percentage of professional application developers who reported iOS as their primary platform
• 43%: Percentage of enterprise application developers who make over $10,000 per month (12K annually) with 19% of consumer app developers making the same amount
• $98,260: Median annual wage of US application software developers in 2015 reported by the US Bureau

Sources: App Annie, Ericsson, Redhat, VisionMobile, US Bureau of Labor Statistics