Indian developers gain through mobile apps
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 19 November 2009, 22:45 IST   |    6 Comments
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Indian developers gain through mobile apps
New Delhi: With the rise in mobile connectivity, the demand for mobile apps is witnessing a surge. This paves way for an increase in the demand for Indian developers, whose apps have gained popularity worldwide. Shanmukh Raj, a 29-year-old developer who works for a Bangalore-based application development company called Robosoft, led a four-member team which recently developed a popular online game called Chess Lite. "It took my team four months to develop this game for the iPhone. And today we have over 1,500 users who have registered for this game, which is hosted on the App store (from Apple)," says Raj, adding, "Chess Lite also figured in the Top 100 chart of Apple's UK App Store for a brief period." Raj is just one of the 1,000-odd Indian developers who work daily on creating applications which include simple and complex games, social networking apps, utility apps and even apps for enterprise solution providers, reports Business Standard. They are either employed with the estimated 50 Indian firms that undertake the development work, or freelance if they have good programming skills. Some of these companies include Robosoft Technologies, Rapidsoft, Spiel Studio, Interchain solutions and Nexmoo. "With the mobile phone emerging as an epicenter both for productivity as well as lifestyle activities, consumers will demand applications that can help them satisfy their needs which have not been met," says Alok Shende, Principal Analyst, Ascentius Consulting. Indeed the market potential is huge with over four billion global mobile users as compared to approximately one billion PCs. The global mobile application market including games is worth $4.66 billion in 2009 and is expected to touch $16.60 billion by 2013. Games, maps/navigation, music and video, news and weather, finance and banking, e-books, social networking and sports are the key drivers for this growth. Businesses in the U.S. are projected to shell out about $9 billion on mobile applications like customer relationship management, email, and SMS by 2011, according to research firm Compass Intelligence. The developer community has another major market with prominent players like Apple, Google, Nokia and now even Research in Motion (RIM) having set up applications stores in India. They host these applications on a revenue-sharing basis. A simple application is priced at around $10,000-15,000, while the price for complex applications can go up to $50,000. Apple, for instance, retains around 30 percent of the cost when it hosts these applications on its stores. The remaining goes to the company that has developed the application.

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