Member Article

Is the US ahead when it comes to mobile app dev?

New survey finds that the US is more focused than the UK on developing mobile app initiatives as a means for driving new revenue

Atlanta and London – November 21st, 2014 – New research conducted by independent research company Opinion Matters reveals that the US is forging ahead of the UK when it comes to seeing the competitive advantage that new mobile app dev projects can deliver. When asked about the goal of new mobile app initiatives, 70% of US companies cited driving new revenue as the primary goal, whereas only 58% of UK respondents cited this as a key goal.

The study polled both US and UK enterprises and found that the top three goals cited were to generate revenue (70% US versus 58% UK), to improve the mobile experience of existing apps (62% US versus 54% UK), and to improve customer experience (50% US versus 54% UK). The desire to generate revenue could explain why in the US more mobile projects have been undertaken in the past 12 months, with over half (55%) of the US respondents claiming to have undertaken between six and ten new projects, versus just under a third (32%) claiming to have undertaken this volume of new projects in the UK. This is also no doubt a key factor in why 86% of US respondents ranked incorporating mobility into current and future apps in their organisation as ‘very important’ versus 76% of UK respondents.

However, the research also showed that both US and UK organisations are currently struggling with a significant mobile backlog and unable to cope with business demands. Of all companies surveyed, 85% have a mobile backlog of between 1 and 20 applications, with US respondents having a slightly higher backlog of between 10 and 20 apps (53% vs 47%). Overall, US respondents reported slightly more projects on backlog than the UK (89% versus 82%). With the average application taking anywhere between three and 12 months to get out the door, this slow approach to app development is increasingly damaging revenue opportunities in the enterprise both for US and UK respondents.

The research was sponsored by OutSystems, the open, rapid application delivery platform (PaaS) provider, and provides a compelling snapshot of the mobile application development landscape and the challenges that US and UK organisations face when delivering such projects to the business.

Paulo Rosado, CEO OutSystems comments: “Employees like - and expect - the same experience they have at work as the one they have at home. The latest Forrester report on Mobile App development predicts that consumer and employee demand for innovative mobile experiences will increase in 2015. According to the report, the requirement for innovative mobile experiences will continue to grow next year as mobile platforms, development tools and programming techniques evolve at a similar pace in an attempt to keep up with demand for best-in-class apps that create customers’ mobile moments.”

Only 4% of those surveyed admitted to having no challenges when building mobile apps which means that 96% are grappling with issues of one nature or another. The top two challenges when building mobile apps are budget (53%) and time (50%). There was a significant difference between the US and UK with regard to time being a challenge with over half (56%) of US companies citing this as a key challenge in comparison to 43% in the UK. However, it would appear that the UK is building applications faster than the US with 49% taking between one and three months to build a mobile app and 43% taking between three and six months, whereas 37% of US respondents are taking between one and three months and 58% are taking between three and six months.

When asked about the different ways to approach development, the US appears to be using cloud more than the UK (35% versus 23%). Overall the vast majority (72%) are using in-house development versus just over half (52%) who had outsourced IT, 29% are using some form of cloud services, be that SaaS or PaaS.

US companies appear to be using more developers to build mobile apps. When asked about team size working on current mobile app projects, US respondents reported higher percentages in the between 16 and 30 developer category (26%) versus 17% in the UK. The UK respondents had a higher percentage in the six to 15 category (75% versus 69%) than US respondents. Overall the US is using more developers with 29% of those surveyed reporting to be using somewhere between 26 and 49 developers, whereas the UK had the greatest number of developers (63% versus 57%) in the between 11 and 25 category.

When asked about the number of open vacancies, both the US and UK were very similar in the between 11% and 25% category (each with 63%), but the US had more vacancies in the between 26% and 50% category (33% versus 24% in the UK). However the survey shows that it is taking longer in the US than the UK to fill these vacancies (27% versus 18% take between six to 12 months).

In terms of skills both US and UK companies are finding it a challenge to hire for Java (31%), JavaScript (19%) and .NET (17%). Other skills cited were HTML5, CSS and UI/Design. Outside of Java, .NET scored very highly for the UK (23%) versus the US (10%).

Opinion Matters surveyed 228 Application Development Directors/Managers in the US and UK during August and September 2014. The split between UK and US respondents was about equal, with around 50% from each territory (111 UK versus 117 US). Results were also segmented by industry sector, role and company size. The full report can be downloaded from the OutSystems website by clicking here.

About OutSystems - OutSystems provides the open, rapid application delivery platform (PaaS) that makes it easy to develop apps once and deliver across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and web - deeply integrated with existing cloud and on-premises databases and systems of record. OutSystems Platform enables the rapid delivery and effortless change of large application portfolios and is available as a public cloud, private cloud and on-premises solution. Over 400 enterprise organisations in 25 countries across 22 industries use the Platform to deliver beautiful mobile and web apps in record time. For more information visit us at www.outsystems.com or follow us on Twitter @OutSystems.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Zahid Jiwa, OutSystems .