King and Halfbrick Studios are some of the most successful mobile game developers. Their best-selling games, i.e. Candy Crash Saga (King) and Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick), rate in the 100M – 500M download tier on Google Play and rank among the Top 100 on iTunes. Did you ever wonder which tools they use and how they compare? Do they use the same SDKs available to the rest of us mortal developers and what can we learn from their tooling choices?

In our latest report, App Economy Forecasts 2015 – 2017, we estimate the number of mobile developers in 2014 at 5.5 million. Demand for mobile development skills has never been higher and yet revenue from app store sales cannot possibly pay their salaries.

The rise of freemium games has been ferociously quick and it continues to accelerate at an incredible pace. It’s estimated that adults now spend, on average, 5 hours and 46 minutes online and on their mobile devices. Time spent online has now surpassed time spend watching TV.

In our latest Developer Economics survey we were really surprised to see a dramatic fall in the level of adoption of User Analytics tools. A year ago they were the most popular category of third party tool with…

The app stores created an opportunity for any developer to build their own products and reach a global audience with them. For some developers this offered the promise of an independent app business, giving them creative control of their work and hopefully a comfortable income. Recently there have been lots of posts (great summary list inside) from current and former independent app developers about the state of the market and how much harder it is to earn a living from your own apps.

In the mobile software world, developers are considered vital to the health of platforms, of which they have several to choose from. Platform owners have to work very hard to make sure their SDKs and tools are easy to use. Too much friction, too little documentation or too steep a learning curve can drive developers away. Which platforms are the easiest to develop for?

So you want to start a business developing apps? Or maybe you have an app business but want some advice on how to grow or improve it? Simply building an app and publishing it on app store as a paid download is extremely likely to result in disappointment.

App development is becoming more and more popular, as web and software developers are migrating to the mobile industry. Secure development on mobile applications, however, has not shown the same level of growth or maturity. This article sums the best ways to build secure apps. It concentrates on OWASP top 10 (and similar) vulnerabilities, as these are most commonly found in mobile apps.

In an earlier post we showed how enterprise app developers make 4 times the revenue of those developing consumer apps on average. Targeting enterprises with apps can be very different from building consumer apps and not all developers prioritise revenue, so it’s not for everyone.

Do you want the indie developer lifestyle, or to build a company? What sort of contact do you want to have with your customers? Do you like consulting work or do you prefer to build your own products full time? Do you have a strong development platform preference? Depending on your answers to these questions you might find one of the 4 reasons below keeps you focussed on consumer apps for the foreseeable future.

The most popular revenue models appear to be those that are easiest to implement. The developers using them tend to have lower revenues. This may be due to greater competition or it might just be a result of less sophisticated app businesses producing less valuable apps. There are some interesting differences between platforms but subscriptions appear to be a relatively untapped gold mine everywhere, although maybe not for everyone.