Only 2.1% of Chinese Mobile Developers Plan Working on Symbian Platform, Says 2011 Chinese Mobile App Developers Report

Guohead, the leading mobile ads mediation platform released its 2011 Chinese Mobile Application Developer Report. We read it through, the statistics included in the report might not be 100% accurate, but it does shows the trend in Chinese mobile industry from the developers’ perspective.

The report is delivered in Chinese, so we pick up some key points to share with the readers here. (The full report can be downloaded here.)

• Mobile OS – Android and iOS are the most interesting platform for developers, and the future of Window Phone 7 is not clear yet;
• Nokia must be quite disappointed (again) –  Only 2.1% of developers plan working on some projects on Symbian platform in next 12 month;
• Life-style, Utilities and Games are the top 3 categories of applications developers want to work on;
• Instead of talking to network operators,  Chinese developers are more willing to use the third-party App Stores and phone manufacturers’ app store as their applications distribution channels;
• Talking about how to promote the applications, Chinese developers still rely on app-focus BBS as their no.1 marketing place, then social networks;
• About half of the applications published are generating income. And depending on the operating system the key revenue source is varied, e.g. the revenue for Android-based apps is mostly (51.03%) from Ads but for iPhone app only 37.14% of revenue is from ads; But 45% of earning for iPhone apps are from the download charge, for Android apps it’s 25.93%; for both systems, we see some revenue are actually from virtual goods (Android:6.17%; iPhone:4.29%);
• I don’t know if it’s good thing or not, in next 12 months, more than 50% of Chinese developers think Ads will be major revenue source, not paid applications;