This report, entitled spotlight on the small business & amp; app creators on the app store, reflects the role and value of small businesses and small development teams in the app store system: more than 90% of developers on the app store are small development teams, and thousands of such developers still join each year; In the past two years, the revenue of small development teams has increased by 113% worldwide, significantly faster than that of large developers.
The start of Apple ecology
The general view in the industry is that Apple has reinvented the smartphone, but in fact, more importantly for more people, the emergence of the app store in 2008 made the smartphone complete. Since then, hardware + software has become a main line of apple.
According to public data: on March 6, 2008, the app store went online, and Apple released iPhone Application development kit (SDK) for third-party developers to develop application software for iPhone. On July 14, 800 applications were available for download in the app store, with a download volume of 10 million times. On January 16, 2009, there were 15000 applications and more than 500 million downloads.
The emergence of the app store has not only made the iPhone omnipotent, but also achieved a new software production model and business model.
According to Sina digital, at present, the total number of developers in Greater China is more than 5 million, an increase of more than 13% compared with 4.4 million in the same period last year, realizing a double-digit growth in one year. From this, we can also see the development speed of the domestic developer community.
Focus on small development teams
These figures are inseparable from the credit of small development teams and individual developers. It is Apple's continuous maintenance of this system that enables the previously fragmented software industry to have a mature business model of centralized sales, unified acquisition and unified feedback to developers.
The data report of Arnold analytics today further reflects the role of small enterprises and small development teams with data. It also shows Apple's attention to this group (most of them are entrepreneurs) from another side.
The definition of "small business and small development team" in this report is that the number of downloads in a single year is no more than 1 million and the revenue is no more than 1 million US dollars. In the data sample, developers with less than 1000 downloads per year from 2015 to 2021 and development teams with a span income of more than $10 million in any 12 months during this period are removed to ensure the accuracy of "small development teams".
According to this statistical method, at present, the proportion of small development teams in the whole app store has exceeded 90%, and there is no doubt that they have become the main force.
And the performance in China is more prominent, which is reflected in three points in this report:
1) From 2015 to 2021, the number of small development teams increased by more than 50% worldwide. In the Chinese market, the number of small development teams has increased by more than 79%, ranking first in the world. The second is South Korea (69%), and the third is Britain (41%).
2) In 2021, small development teams joined the app store from all over the world, of which about 24% came from Europe, 23% from China, 14% from the United States, 4.3% from Japan and 34% from other regions, such as South Korea, India and Brazil. And the number of small developers joining the app store continues to grow.
3) From 2019 to 2021, the revenue of small development teams increased by 113% worldwide, among which the top five countries are France, the United States, South Korea, Germany and China.
4) In 2021, among the teams selling digital products and services through the app store of more than $1 million, 40% of the development teams worldwide have never published works on the app store, or their revenue was less than $10000 five years ago. In China, the proportion is higher, about 50% - which means that app store helps more developers pass the threshold of $1 million from scratch.
The story of three developers
While talking about this report, we also talked with three independent developers. They are the typical representatives of small enterprises and small development teams in the Arnold analysis report.
Wang Weidong, an independent developer, developed a product called Pixiu bookkeeping. At present, he is the only one in the whole team, responsible for product planning, interaction design, visual design, development, testing, marketing, customer service, business and so on. Wang Weidong thinks that at present, one person is OK, because "there are still many partners, the most important of which includes two partners, one is a large number of users, and the other is the platform."
Wang Weidong mentioned that the app store provides a stable source of users; As well as the ability to provide global settlement, and the stable Icould cloud service enables its users to realize cross device resource experience.
These are very important for independent developers like him. Naturally, it goes without saying the importance of user resources. Second, developers do not need to spend energy on financial transactions with users. This is a very practical help for a team with only one person.
Liang Yilun and Liu Yi of riddle technology are husband and wife. They founded riddle at the end of 2018. At present, there are five people in the team, and ten apps have been put on the app store, with a total of more than 10 million downloads.
Liang Yilun said that Apple's platform not only helps them gain users worldwide, but also pays attention to "small business plan (the developer Commission with an annual income of less than $1 million is reduced to 15%)" which reduces their economic pressure and can devote more energy to application.
And some activities organized by Apple can also give them more extra help. For example, since 2019, they have received a lot of help from Shanghai accelerator and learned about Apple's latest development technology in regular online courses. During participating in the accelerator assistance program at the end of last year, the [iPad] of multiple applications was improved( https://apple.pvxt.net/c/1251234/435400/7639?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fcn%2Fipad%2F ) Version.
Independent game producer Chen Hongqu and his wife Yu Jingxuan (also a team member) also mentioned the help of Apple platform for them to find users around the world. "With the app store, we can communicate directly with the platform, and Apple will help us do global promotion, so that we can directly skip the agent, which is a very good pit avoidance strategy for the distribution of the game."
For games, there is another point different from conventional apps. Yu Jingxuan also mentioned that stand-alone games are afraid of piracy, and the app store provides a safe and transparent way. And developers can directly see its revenue, rather than see an opaque data through an agent, which is a very important protection for small teams.
Sina digital also asked the three developers about the "sideloading" problem discussed recently (installing apps from third-party channels). The reason why they uniformly reject this approach is actually related to the benefits of the arrival of the app store mentioned above. The sideloading will obviously erase all the advantages they just mentioned, such as cross-border settlement, transparent background, and Apple's separate help to developers.
For small companies with only a few people, any of the above will distract their energy, spend more time or hire more people to solve these problems.
In fact, a similar situation has always existed in the Android camp (especially in various domestic android markets). Although on the surface, various channels have increased the opportunity of APP dissemination, in fact, in order to take care of each distribution channel. Developers spend more energy.