Mobile games and utilities software most popularly developed
ConvergenceAsia Staff
21/06/2007

According to IDC's survey report, Asia Pacific (including Japan) Software Developers: Development "On-the-Go", software developers are mostly involved in producing mobile games and utilities software. Of those respondents who were involved with games development, the majority was from large value-added reseller (VAR) or software distributor organisations, whereas utilities software was mostly developed by IT hardware manufacturers.

IDC expects the mobile development trend to continue upwards as developers from smaller sized organisations gain an improved handle on the associated software tools. "Software tools vendors need to package their products to suit smaller budgets and adopt a marketing message that will attract developers from smaller sized organisations to consider their application software tools," says Prianka Srinivasan, Market Analyst at IDC's Asia Pacific Software Research team.

When respondents were asked to identify the multimedia or information types that they would expect to focus on in mobile application development in the next two years, audio and video multimedia types were most frequently mentioned; while JPEG images and animation were ranked third and fifth respectively (see chart below).

The survey also indicated possible new areas of mobile applications that developers are contemplating. Although games and utilities are currently hot items, IDC has observed some gradual shifts in the development of other software related to business operations and productivity.

What kind of multimedia or information types will be used in the mobile applications that you expect your organisation to develop in the next 24 months?


Source: IDC's 2006 Software Developer Collaborative Survey on Mobile Application Development. (n = 169, values are weighted. Multiple responses were allowed.)

The survey results also suggested that the purchase of and demand for software quality assurance and requirement management tools would increase. "IDC expects vendors to accelerate their product awareness efforts and cash in on the shift towards using more application life-cycle tools in the mobile application development market," adds Prianka Srinivasan.

Over 500 respondents in 18 countries throughout the APJ region participated in IDC's 2006 Software Developer Collaborative Survey on Mobile Application Development. The survey provides information regarding the adoption of and involvement in mobile application development of software developers in the APJ region. Other themes related to the purchase of tools, technologies and frameworks for mobile application development were also explored in the survey.

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