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Events

Developer Conferences 2019: The Roundup

developer conferences

Conferences are the best place to share your passions and get a great booster in trends, knowledge & even hacks. Here is a roundup of developer conferences taking place in 2019 globally.

Keep an eye on these if:

  • you want to upscale your current knowledge and network,
  • meet fellow developers,
  • you are ready to push yourself to build new paths in your career
  • you just want to learn new things & find fresh content on new technologies, latest practices, and innovative techniques.

 

Best Dev Free Conferences: 

AllDayDevOps

AllDayDevOps is a DevOps conference with over 30,000 participants that houses over 120+ sessions spread out between five tracks, and 24 hours, including CI/CD, cloud-native infrastructure, DevSecOps, cultural transformations, and site reliability engineering

  • November 6, 2019
  • Online
  • Free

 

DevConf.IN 2019

DevConf.IN 2019 is the annual Developers’ Conference organized by Red Hat in India. It is meant to provide a platform to the local FOSS community participants to come together and engage in knowledge sharing through technical talks, workshops, panel discussions, and hackathons.

  • August 2-3, 2019
  • Bengaluru, India
  • Free

 

Best Dev Conferences: Series of Worldwide Conferences 

DevOpsDays

DevOpsDays focuses on general DevOps topics and includes curated talks. It also features a spin on the concept of open space, with discussions on software development and IT infrastructure.

  • 29 May – 28 November, 2019
  • Worldwide, including: Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa
  • Depending on location (~$150)

 

DevOps World | Jenkins World

DevOps World | Jenkins World is a Jenkins-supported DevOps conference. It focuses on the automation software Jenkins and it welcomes more than 2,500 attendees, making it the largest Jenkins-focused DevOps conference.

  • August 12-15, 2019 & December 2-5, 2019
  • San Fransisco, USA & Lisbon, Portugal
  • $499 – $1.199

 

Monitorama

Monitorama focuses strictly on software and infrastructure monitoring.

  • June 3-5, 2019 & October 21-22, 2019
  • Portland & Baltimore
  • $400

 

DevOps Enterprise Summit Europe & USA

DevOps Enterprise Summit is aimed at leaders of large, complex organizations that are implementing DevOps principles and practices.

  • June 25-27, 2019 in Europe & October 28-30, 2019 in USA
  • London, UK & Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
  • £600-£800 + VAT in Europe & $1,400 to $1,975 in USA

 

KubeCon/CloudNativeCon USA & China

KubeCon (and CloudNativeCon) is a Linux Foundation event focused on the Kubernetes technology.

  • November 18 – 21, 2019 in USA & June 24-26, 2019 in China
  • San Diego, California & Shanghai, China
  • $150 – $1.200 in USA & ￥375 – ￥6000

 

Best Dev Conferences in Europe: 

DevOpsCon

This conference includes an expo floor and addresses topics such as continuous delivery, microservices, docker, cloud computing, and shorter delivery cycles.

  • June 11-14, 2019
  • Berlin, Germany
  • €413-€1,979

 

Devopsdays Amsterdam

devopsdays Amsterdam brings development, operations, QA, InfoSec, management, and leadership together to discuss the culture and tools to make better organizations and products.

  • June 26-28, 2019
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • €99.00 – €249.00

 

CloudNative London

CloudNative covers everything cloud-native, from containers and schedulers to Kubernetes & DevOps.

  • September 25-27
  • London, UK
  • $1,195

 

JAX London

JAX London is a four-day conference for cutting edge software engineers and enterprise-level professionals. Brings together the world’s leading innovators in the fields of JAVA, microservices, continuous delivery, and DevOps.

  • October 7-10, 2019
  • London, UK
  • £399.00  – £649.00

 

JokerConf

Joker is a large international Java conference for Senior Java developers, with more than 1400 participants.

  • October 25-26, 2019
  • Saint Petersburg, Russia
  • $TBA

 

Devoxx Belgium

Devoxx Belgium is a 5-day conference where developers and architects join to examine the latest technology advancements and fascinating ideas, with some of the most inspiring speakers of the sector.

  • November 4 – 8, 2019
  • Antwerp, Belgium
  • €350 – €845

 

dotJS 2019

The world’s largest & sharpest JavaScript conference.

  • December 5-6, 2019
  • Paris, France
  • €299/€199 (2-day/1-day passes)

 

Devternity

The conference that turns developers into architects and engineering leaders.

  • December 6-7, 2019
  • Riga, Latvia
  • €299 – €598

 

Best Conferences in North America: 

Agile + DevOps West

Agile + DevOps West offers a full menu of conference services, including talks from recognized subject-matter experts and training and certification classes the day before the official conference begins.

  • June 2-7, 2019
  • Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
  • $1,595 to $3,995

 

Apple WWDC19

Apple gives you the chance to join thousands of coders, creators,  this summer to create insanely great coding.

  • June 3-7, 2019
  • San Jose, California
  • $1,599 (2019 registration is closed)

 

Velocity Conference

Velocity focuses on real-world best practices for building, deploying, and running complex, distributed applications and systems.

  • June 10-13,2019
  • San Jose, California, USA
  • $1.135 – $1.595

 

Open Source Summit

Open Source Summit is a technical conference where 2,000+ developers, operators, and community leadership professionals collaborate, share information and learn about the latest trends in open technologies, including Linux, containers, cloud computing and more.

  • August 21-23, 2019
  • San Diego, California
  • $950 ($275 hobbyist/academic tickets also available)

 

ApacheCon

In ApacheCon you can learn about the latest innovations in containers, cloud, DevOps, IoT, servers, web frameworks, plus many other Apache projects and communities in a collaborative, vendor-neutral environment.

  • September 9-12, 2019
  • Las Vegas
  • $500 (prices increase after June 27th)

 

Microsoft Ignite

Microsoft created Ignite to consolidate several smaller conferences: Microsoft Management Summit, Microsoft Exchange Conference, SharePoint Conference, Lync Conference, Project Conference, and TechEd.

  • November 2-8
  • Orlando, Florida, USA
  • $ TBA

 

Cybersecurity & Cloud Expo 2019

Arriving in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Cyber Security & Cloud event is co-located with the IoT Tech Expo, AI & Big Data Expo and Blockchain Expo so you can explore the convergence of these technologies in one place.

  • November 13-14, 2019
  • Santa Clara, California
  • $129 – $949 (prices increase after June 29th)

 

AWS re:Invent 2019

Join the AWS re:invent 2019 for deep technical sessions, hands-on bootcamps, hackathons, workshops, chalk talks, keynotes, and fun.

  • December 2-6, 2019
  • Las Vegas
  • $1,799 (2018)

 

Best Dev Conferences in APAC: 

 

SREcon Asia Pacific

SREcon 2019 is a gathering of engineers who care deeply about site reliability, systems engineering and working with complex distributed systems at scale.

  • June 12–14, 2019
  • Singapore
  • $750 – $900

 

Rootconf 2019

Rootconf 2019 is established in the middle of an era of data leaks and vulnerabilities, managing and running large infrastructure systems, architecting for the cloud and simultaneously optimizing costs.

  • 21-22 JUNE 2019
  • Bangalore, India
  • ₹3100 – ₹5800

 

PHPConf.Asia 2019

Can’t stop discussing and arguing about your favorite PHP framework? Join the challenge of defending the various PHP frameworks.

  • June 23-26, 2019
  • Singapore
  • $ TBA

 

RISE:

From the team behind Web Summit comes RISE, a gathering of the world’s biggest companies and most exciting startups. With more than 15,000 attendees and 350+ speakers expected, this is a truly massive event.

  • July 8-11, 2019
  • Hong Kong
  • $680

 

Open Source Summit Japan

Open Source Summit Japan is the leading conference in Japan. I is connecting the open source ecosystem under one roof, providing a forum for technologists and open source industry leaders.

  • July 17-19, 2019
  • Tokyo, Japan
  • $150 – $450

 

DevOps Talks Conference

DevOps Talks Conference (DOTC) brings together DevOps leaders, engineers, and architects who are implementing DevOps principles and practices in Start-Ups and in Leading Enterprise companies.

  • September 10-11, 2019
  • Sydney, Australia
  • $799,33

 

CIO Leaders Summit Indonesia

CIO Summit in Indonesia is the largest and most respected gathering of CIO’s and IT leaders in Jakarta.

  • October 24, 2019
  • Jakarta, Indonesia
  • $ TBA

 

Xilinx Developer Forum

XDF connects software developers and system designers to the deep expertise of Xilinx engineers, partners, and industry leaders. Earn insights and inspiration an get ready to tackle your next breakthrough in an application or system design.

  • December 3 – 4, 2019
  • Beijing, China
  • $ TBA

 

Best Dev Conferences in South America:

 

The Developer’s Conference

The Developer’s Conference (TDC) is the largest event related to software development in Brazil. It is connecting meetup and event organizers, speakers, companies, and sponsors on a single platform, in order to empower the local ecosystem.

  • July 16-20, 2019
  • Sao Paolo, Brazil
  • $TBA

 

Ekoparty Security Conference

Ekoparty Security Conference is the annual IT security event that, due to its unique characteristics and its particular style, has become a benchmark for all of Latin America. The attendees have the chance to learn more about the latest technological innovations, vulnerabilities, and tools.

  • September 25-27, 2019
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • $TBA

 

WorkTech Buenos Aires

WorkTech Buenos Aires is the leading international conference dedicated to the future of work by bringing together international experts, who provide an inspiring and innovative look.

  • October 17, 2019
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • $TBA

 

InfoComm Colombia

InfoComm is the main fair for the Audio, Video, Lighting, Domotics, Networks, Voice and Data industry in the region of Colombia.

  • October 23-25, 2019
  • Bogota, Colombia
  • $TBA

 

The 7th International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Innovation

The purpose of the conference is to bring together practitioners and researchers from academe, industry, and government. The aim is to advance the state of the art in Software Engineering, as well as generating synergy between academy and industry.

  • October 23 – 25, 2019
  • Mexico City, Mexico
  • $TBA

Best Dev Conferences in Middle East & Africa:

 

AI expo Africa

AI Expo Africa is the largest business-focused Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Data Science Community event in Africa.

  • September 4-5th, 2019
  • Cape Town, South Africa
  • R4,500 – R6,500

 

International Conference on Science, Engineering & Technology – ICSET 2019

ICSET 2018 will provide an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and a result in Science, Engineering & Technology. The goal of the Conference is to provide a platform to share cutting-edge development in the field for both researchers and practitioners.

  • September 25-26, 2019
  • Johannesburg, South Africa
  • $TBA

 

South Africa 2019

The ideal conference for database administration and developer community who use PostgreSQL to get to know each other, exchange ideas and learn about the current features and upcoming trends within PostgreSQL.

  • October 08 – 09, 2019
  • Johannesburg, South Africa
  • $TBA

 

3th edition of International Conference Europe Middle East & North Africa On Information System Technology and Learning Researches

EMENA-ISTL 2019 is the conference that focuses on areas of Information System & Technology, e-Learning and artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and how it applies to the real world.

  • November 21-23, 2019
  • Marrakech, Morocco
  • $TBA

 

Africa Arena

AfricArena accelerates the growth of tech startups and the ecosystems in which they operate by providing a platform where they can share their business model, gain valuable networks and attain funding.

  • December 11-12, 2019
  • Cape Town, South Africa
  • R1,499 – R7,975

 

Did you find this list useful or did we forget any important conferences? Anyhow, let us know your opinion in the comment section!

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Categories
Tools

[Infographic] The latest trends on developer tools, skills and salaries.

We recently announced the  State of the Developer Nation Q1 2017 report which is based on the 12th edition Developer Economics survey, which took a 360° on developer tools, skills and salaries. The report sheds light on current developer trends based on responses from over 21,200 developers globally, across multiple research areas including Cloud, Mobile, IoT, Desktop, Web, Augmented & Virtual Reality, and Machine Learning.

For the first time in the history of Developer Economics, VisionMobile asked developers how much they earn in salaries and contractor fees, to explore what projects and types of development are more lucrative around different locations. What’s more, the report uncovers how technology battles continue on the web front with Angular vs React Javascript, Amazon Web Services is in a price war with their public cloud competitors, the IoT market is underdeveloped and highly fragmented, and Machine Learning developers are striving to identify what is the ideal programming language to use.

Check out our infographic on some of the many interesting  insights from  the State of the Developer Nation Q1 2017 report.

Developer trends 2017- Infographic

VisionMobile is very lucky to be supported by the entire developer community: from the largest Internet and software companies to the smallest local Meetups. Partnering  with these organisations, big and small, ensures that there is a representative sample across all developers so that something valuable is delivered  back to the community. The following are the top contributing communities for  the State of the Developer Nation Q1 2017: Amazon, SitePoint, Outsystems, 51CTO, Microsoft, Intel, The Linux Foundation, Android Weekly, InMobi, SellMyApp and Ubuntu.

The full report with more insights and graphs is available for download here.

We are currently running our new survey and it is sci-fi themed! Would you like to contribute ? Take the survey 

Categories
News and Resources

News roundup – Google opens Early Access beta testing to more developers

razer fund gaming startups

Welcome to DeveloperEconomics’ weekly news roundup. In this edition, Google cancels its modular smartphone project, Apple plans to delete abandoned apps from the App Store and Epic releases a new version of Unreal Engine 4. Read on for the full news rundown.

Google opens Early Access beta testing to more developers

Google has expanded its Early Access beta testing, allowing any developer apply for the program. Previously, Early Access was only available to 29 hand-picked developers, who got to test out their apps with early-adopters (although other devs were given different testing options). Google says the Early Access program generated over 1 million beta installs since launching in May and “demand is only growing.”

Google Search can now look-up content within apps

Google has introduced a new search mode in its Google app that lets users perform in-app searches The “In App” feature currently only works with Gmail, Spotify and YouTube, but will soon feature in-app searching on Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Evernote, Gilde, Todoist and more. Because the search function involves the OS itself, In Apps currently only works on Android.

Apple removing outdated apps from App Store

Apple will begin removing apps from the App Store if they no longer work, are outdated or “don’t follow current guidelines.” The company will also prevent devs from using overly long app names to game app searches, limiting app names to 50 characters or less. Apple will start reviewing apps on September 7 and will remove the ones that crash on launch immediately.

Amazon rumoured to announce Echo UK launch on September 14

Amazon has sent out press invites to what’s rumoured to be the UK launch of its voice-controlled Echo device, which features the Alexa voice assistant. The event is scheduled to take place on September 14 in London, although it doesn’t mention the Echo. According to Engadget, if you ask Alexa what she has planned for the 14th, she replies “a visit to London.”

Google cancels modular Project Ara smartphone

Google has pulled the plug on Project Ara, its modular smartphone concept. Project Ara was designed to let users upgrade and customise their device with camera, speakers, microphones and other modules. According to Reuters, Google may consider licensing Ara to its hardware partners, enabling some of its features to appear on devices in the future.

Google to reveal Daydream VR and Pixel devices on October 4

Google will reportedly reveal its in-house design for a Daydream VR viewer device at an event on October 4. According to Android Police, the company will also show-off two Pixel-branded smartphones (which replace the Nexus brand) and a 4K Chromecast. The event will also provide more details on Google’s Amazon Echo-rival Google Home.

Qualcomm unveils VR all-in-one headset

Qualcomm has unveiled a new reference platform for standalone virtual reality headsets, which it’s calling the Snapdragon VR820. It’s built upon the Snapdragon VR SDK and is designed to help developers create the hardware, software and content needed to create VR experiences. It’s anticipated that it wil be available in Q4 2016.

Baidu launches open source machine learning project

Chinese search engine Baidu has released PaddlePaddle, an open source software platform for the deep learning community. According to Baidu, the platform provides an intuitive interface for data handling and specifying model structure. PaddlePaddle was originally developed for internal use on Baidu’s deep learning apps.

HP announces machine-learning tool for drag and drop app development

HP has announced Haven OnDemand Combinations, a new tool that combines machine learning APIs and a drag and drop interface for mixing and matching them. The tool is built upon HP’s Haven OnDemand could platform, which has 70 AI APIs and more than 180,000 users. HP says the new tool is the quickest way to add intelligence to apps.

Unreal Engine 4.13 released

Epic has released the latest version of Unreal Engine, bringing over 145 improvements to the game development platform. Major new features include shadow map caching for movable lights, a new live recording feature, Voronoi noise for material creation, new mesh decals and new VR features such as project templates and support for mesh and foliage painting with VR controllers.

Google releases pure JavaScript Closure Compiler

Google’s Closure Compiler is now available in pure JavaScript. Closure Compiler is a JavaScript optimizer, transpiler and type checker. This new version isn’t a rewrite in JavaScript, says Google, but rather compiles the Java source to JS to run under Node.

Bloomberg releases BuckleScript optimising compiler

Bloomberg’s tech arm has announced BuckleScript, a new optimising compiler strongly inspired” by TypeScript. According to Bloomberg, BuckleScript offers an “industrial strength” type system and provides strong type inference, to generate more efficient code. Bloomberg adds that the compiler is at least 10x faster than TypeScript.

HTC invests $5 million in VR start-up Steel Wool

VR gaming start-up Steel Wool Studios has closed a $5 million round of funding, coming entirely from HTC. Steel Wool was one of the early developers for HTC and Valve’s Vive headset, creating the action strategy title Quar: Battle for Gate 18. Steel Wool said the funding does not mean their games will be exclusive to the Vive.

Intel acquiring drone start-up Movidius

Intel is buying Movidius, a start-up that makes computer vision processors used in drones and VR devices. Intel says it wants to combine Movidius’ technology with its RealSense depth-sensing camera tech, covering markets such as VR, AR, drones and digital security cameras. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Categories
Community Platforms

Angelo Kastroulis – Mobile Development Runs Deep

mobile development

blog_interview

Developer Profile:
Angelo Kastroulis

Angelo Photo (1)

At VisionMobile, we believe in the people behind the numbers. While it’s important to understand numbers, trends and segments, it’s equally important to understand the people who buy our products and services. This developer profile is one in a series designed to help us get to know some of the people behind the statistics.

Job title and company:
Founder, Independent Consultant at Carrera Group

Country/Area:
Florida, United States

Development Focus:
Enterprise software expert for hire. “I like doing independent work,” he explains, “there’s no enterprise baggage.. You’re there to do a job, to solve a difficult problem, to help clients through something.” There’s where he likes to focus: on fixing problems and doing so outside of a company’s culture. He continues, “I know we’re not going to rewrite this whole thing: I’m here to do one specific thing and provide some development help or architectural advice to help get you out of a jam. For six months, I can help with this antiquated technology.”

He works across multiple technologies, but focuses on the healthcare industry.

Languages used:
Kastroulis counsels against getting too caught up in language or platform fanaticism. He recommends using the best tool for a given job. That said, his go-to technologies include JavaScript (Node.js), Microsoft .Net, C, Python, and a “tiny bit” of Java.

Favorite project built recently:
Kastroulis reports how he enjoys working on new projects with new challenges. His favorite project was building a high performance column-store database kernel. Another recent project was an electronic prescribing and ER discharge application for both the web and iOS devices.

Favorite tools:
As do many developers, Kastroulis prefers to use the appropriate toolset for the project – and to choose toolsets he’s most familiar with. Enterprise developers may not have that flexibility, but independent developers often do. His favorite toolset is Visual Studio Code, which works across platforms. He also uses node.js and a lot of JetBrains tools (especially for C and Python). On a Mac he uses Sublime Text and command-line tools. Of course, for source code management he uses GitHub and Git on the command line. “I’ve worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Heroku, but Azure is my cloud host of choice,” he adds. “Azure is easier to work with and it’s HIPAA compliant.”

Best developer-related advice you would give to another developer
While it’s hard to predict the future, Kastroulis advises developers to “get an idea of where the world is headed and try to get there first.” He concedes that you may not always be right, “but follow your gut.” Take advantage of industry knowledge, and take advantage of the expertise you gain focusing in your industry (healthcare, financial, and so on).

Categories
Business Platforms

Microsoft’s Mobile Opportunity

Microsoft’s Mobile Opportunity

Microsoft was slow to react to the step change in user experience provided by iOS and Android versus the first generation smartphone platforms. Windows Phone was then late to market and has finished a distant third in the smartphone platform wars. Smartphone adoption was consumer led and in the race to catch up Windows Phone skipped some enterprise friendly features. This has left it out of the running for business adoption too. In tablets, Windows RT was largely rejected by the market and Intel processor based devices running Windows 8 have only managed a weak third place in the market so far. In terms of their share of the mobile OS market, Microsoft is a long way behind Apple and Google. However, as enterprises are increasingly making big investments in mobile, Microsoft’s mobile opportunity is still not lost.

infragistics-2-cover

If you can’t beat them, join them

Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, has made it clear. The company’s focus is now mobile-first and cloud-first. This includes aggressively rolling out their services across iOS and Android.

In fact they already have more than 100 apps across the two platforms and that number is growing fast. Nadella has not been hesitant to acquire technology where previous strategy has left gaps. The new Outlook apps for iOS and Android is based on the Acompli apps that Microsoft acquired late last year. It will likely be enhanced in the near future with the technology from recently acquired calendar app Sunrise.

In addition to filling out their offering and buying in talent for their competitors platforms, they have also moved to protect their dominance in productivity software. Microsoft Office is free for consumers on mobile platforms. To sweeten the deal for those who pay they’ve added unlimited storage via OneDrive. They then removed reasons to switch by opening up to competing storage solutions such as Dropbox and Box.

Following the old adage that the best form of defense is a good offense, these moves help keep Microsoft’s central position in the daily life of business users whilst starving startups hoping to topple them of revenue. No-one without Microsoft’s scale can compete directly on price whilst offering similar value.

Developers, developers, developers!

The other key to protecting Microsoft’s core enterprise revenues is keeping their technology stack at the heart of enterprise app development. For this to happen, third party enterprise app developers need to stick with .NET and related tools to build apps for iOS and Android. Developer loyalty is where Microsoft has been very strong.

Slashdata’s Developer Economics surveys repeatedly show Windows Phone with massively higher developer mindshare than the installed base of devices merits. That mindshare also continues to grow despite ongoing lack of traction with device sales.

One of the reasons for this developer loyalty is that Microsoft makes top class developer tools. They’ve invested heavily in this area for a very long time. Most developers don’t want to downgrade their tools and productivity in order to target another platform.

While Microsoft didn’t do the groundwork necessary to let developers target iOS and Android with their tools, Xamarin did. Microsoft and Xamarin have a global partnership to enable C# developers (and to some extent Visual Basic developers) to target iOS and Android via Visual Studio. Microsoft open sourced their state-of-the-art Roslyn compiler technology for .NET, presumably mainly so that Xamarin could integrate it. It seems likely that the partnership between the two companies will deepen at some point, probably through investment or acquisition. In any case, it seems to be working.

In the Q1 2015 Developer Economics survey, Xamarin was the second most popular cross-platform tool, behind only PhoneGap/Cordova.

The survey data also shows that C# is clearly on the rise as a language for mobile development.

Microsoft’s Mobile Opportunity: The next best thing

If you can’t own the OS and platform APIs then the next best thing is to own the developer tooling and thus the key relationship with developers. If you want to introduce or drive new features or standards (that don’t require new hardware or OS level support) then it’s the developer relationship you need to own rather than the platform itself.

Arguably a lot of innovation in mobile going forward will be achieved through cloud services. Microsoft would love to own those APIs. This only goes so far in the consumer space. Apple and Google can veto Microsoft’s moves at the public app store interface. However, in the enterprise, where most apps are not distributed via the public app stores, anything goes. This is where Microsoft’s biggest mobile opportunity lies. It’s also where the bulk of the revenue in app development will end up.

If Microsoft can keep a huge pool of developers fed and happy on mobile then they’ll be in a much better position for whatever comes next in computing.

Categories
Tools

21 tools behind the success of King and Halfbrick Studios

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?

29-tools-behind-king-halfbrick-1

We analysed 39 apps (iOS and Android) from King.com and Halfbrick Studios to determine which SDKs they are using and what tools makes them tick. We ‘ve broken down the results by tool sector for easier comparison. Note our analysis technology is still in beta, so let us know how we can improve it.

Halfbrick Studios King
Ad networks and exchanges Google Ads
Apple iAd
InMobi Native Ads Platform
Millennial Media
MoPub
Vungle		 Google Ads
Apple iAd
Game development Apple GameKit
Amazon Game Circle
Google Play Games Services		 Apple GameKit
Google Play Games Services
MV* frameworks Angular
Crash analytics and bug tracking ACRA ACRA
Crittercism
User analytics Google Analytics
Kontagent
App monetization Amazon In-App Purchasing
Google Play In-app Billing
Google Wallet		 Amazon In-App Purchasing
Google Play In-app Billing
Google Wallet
Social Tools Facebook
Google+
Twitter4J		 Facebook
Google+
KakaoTalk

Let’s consider these tooling choices one sector at a time.

1. Ad networks and exchanges

Starting with Ad Networks, you can tell HalfBrick Studios employs a handful of tools, while King uses only the major networks of each platform, i.e. Google Ads (Android) and Apple iAd (iOS). This is indicative of the reliance of the two companies on ad revenues. King has long abandoned advertising as a revenue source with a clearer focus on in-app purchases.

Bear in mind it is quite common for app developers to use multiple ad networks. If demand is not met by the first network’s supply, you move to the next network and so forth until you find a medium to display. That is why Halfbrick Studios uses multiple ad networks, and indeed they have chosen high performance networks.

2. MV* frameworks

Halfbrick Studios using AngularJS, a popular JavaScript MV* framework, might strike as a surprise. What does JavaScript have to do with Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride? Digging a bit deeper we discover Halfbrick is using web technologies to implement BrickNet – a service that allows transfer of scores and saves across multiple devices. The BrickNet service is bundled with all the company games we examined.

This strikes another chord: there has been a lot of talking on how web technologies are not suitable for mobile apps due to mainly performance reasons. Well, this case is a testament that technologies are not good or bad per se – it all depends on the use case.

3. User analytics

Regarding user analytics, we were unable to detect any SDKs on King’s games. They could be using a custom in-house solution, or an unknown-to-us tool.

Halfbrick Studio uses the notorious Google Analytics in combination with Kontagent (rebranded as Upsight), which is better positioned for mobile games. The takeaway here is that the most popular tool of the category, i.e. Google Analytics, works perfectly for top as well as indie developers. [tweetable]The difference is in not in which tool you use, but how you use that tool[/tweetable], i.e. how do you interpret the analytics data and use it to grow your company.

4. Social tools

While Halfbrick Studios uses all the popular western social networks, King is more picky. They don’t seem to like Twitter, at least on the apps we found in the US stores. They do however use KakaoTalk on the iOS version.

Anything we missed?

So, this wraps it up. What did you learn from the tooling choices of King and Halfbrick studios? Is there anything we missed? Want to see more of these tooling deep dives? Leave a comment below and let us know.

Categories
Tools

App Industry Picks & Shovels: How to succeed with mobile developer tools

developer tools

In the great app store gold rush of the last 5 years a lot of vendors of virtual picks and shovels have set up shop, hoping to cash in on the boom regardless of which individual developers succeed in a fiercely competitive market. Having surveyed developers on their tool choices and revenues, we can see how popular these third party tools and services are. We can also reveal whether those buying the virtual picks tend to do better than those who opt for the virtual shovels, or whether you really need both developer tools.

Print

With great opportunity comes great complexity

As the expected level of quality and functionality in mobile apps is increasing, the monetisation strategies are also getting more complex. [tweetable]In order to succeed, most developers need advanced tools to manage quality in a world of fragmentation[/tweetable]. To optimise revenue models beyond the simple paid download, systems to acquire and analyse the behaviour of users are also essential. Most developers turn to third parties to provide some or all of these tools. Many additionally look to third parties to provide some of the functionality, particularly via scalable cloud-hosted services.

Over 85% of developers who completed this section of our survey use at least one third party tool, while just over 45% of developers use tools from at least 3 different categories. There’s clearly significant demand but how does tool adoption correlate to revenue? Looking at only those developers who generate between $1 per month and $5 million per month (i.e. excluding those not trying to make money, not yet making money and the mega-rich – n=1596) we get the following:

More developer tool use, less risk

Looking at only the mean average revenues you could be forgiven for thinking that developers should be avoiding most third party tools, since by far the wealthiest developers are those not using them. However, a look at the median revenues shows the opposite. Some of the largest and most successful developers can afford to build and control their own tools so don’t need third party offerings. [tweetable]The vast majority of developers trying to make it without any third party tooling support generate hardly any revenue at all[/tweetable]. The median number of people involved in development for the organisations not using tools is 1, whilst it is 3.5 (2-5) for all other results. In general the increasing median revenue with use of more tool categories suggests that those who use more tools have lower financial risks. It’s tempting to speculate that there’s some causation here where developers are able to offload some risk by using proven third party solutions. In fact, the major driver is that the tool categories cover such a wide spectrum of apps that the more you use the more likely you are to be doing a lot of contract development – an inherently lower risk revenue model.

It’s not what developer tools you use, it’s how you use them

How use of tools in the various categories correlates with revenues doesn’t produce any great surprises. Those using cross-promotion networks, game development tools and ad networks are at the bottom of the revenue pile. Large game developers and publishers tend to have their own game engines, can cross-promote with their own titles and even run their own ad systems. The [tweetable]smaller, independent developers who rely on third parties for this typically struggle to climb the app store charts[/tweetable]. App store analytics users are next up from the bottom, this may simply reflect the relatively poor revenues of those who rely on app stores. Most other tool use was correlated with fairly average revenues. Notably above average, ranking second overall, is Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) – where the mean revenues are about 35% higher than average and the median revenues 50% higher. As a result those using a BaaS typically beat average revenues by significantly more than the associated costs.

Using the data from our survey at the beginning of the year, we previously argued that developers who collect lots of analytics and quality data for their apps and act on it are significantly more likely to succeed. Users of crash analytics tools had the highest mean ($26k/person/month) and median ($2.1k/person/month) revenues of any single tool category in the latest survey. Nearly 50% of respondents to this section of the survey now use usage* analytics tools so it’s unsurprising that their mean revenues are almost exactly average ($17.5k/person/month) although noteworthy that their median revenues are 50% above the average ($1.5k vs $1k). Those using both crash and usage analytics tools had similar mean revenue to those just using crash analytics but significantly higher median revenue ($3.5k). The only tool combination to beat this was crash and usage analytics plus beta testing, which had mean revenues of $33k and median revenues of $3.75k. Beta testing tools can also help developers to improve the quality and usability of their apps, as such it’s interesting that those using just crash analytics and beta testing had extremely low mean ($5k) & median ($750) revenues. Possibly this last tool combination typically signifies a developer with a quality problem rather than one proactively seeking quality?

Is selling picks and shovels where the real money is?

There are some massive app developer success stories but our data suggests that the typical app developer (as represented by median revenue) is struggling to break even. It turns out that the developer tools market is similarly competitive. Selling services to developers ranks third in mean revenue per organisation and per person involved amongst all revenue models (behind per device royalties/license fees and subscriptions). Compared to the users of the tools the mean average income at $29k/person/month is slightly higher than for users of any single tool category but the median income is exactly the same as for the tool users.

* This category gets called both “user analytics” and “usage analytics”. The developer tools do both, although if you only use them to get an idea of who your user base are and how often they use the app (user), rather than what they do in the app (usage), you’re probably doing it wrong.