Developer Programs Benchmarking 2015 Sample Report

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Developer Economics is our semi-annual industry research series, tracking app developer trends, attitudes, experiences and monetization by region.

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Content 1. Introduction 2. Key questions answered in this report 3. Segmenting the Developer Community 4. What is a developer program? 5. Developer Program Benchmarks 6. New programs can still be successful but perhaps more

targeted 7. Appendix I - Developer Program Summaries 8. Appendix II - Developer Program Summary Charts

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9TH EDITION DEVELOPER ECONOMICS

13,000+ DEVELOPERS POLLED

140+ COUNTRIES COVERED

15 DEVELOPER PROGRAMS COMPARED, AND RANKED

EACH PROGRAM RATED AGAINST 11 DIFFERENT CRITERIA

FREQUENCY OF USE, AND SATISFACTION, RATED FOR EVERY PROGRAM

Key questions that this report answers: Which companies are offering the best developer programs?

Which developer programs excel in specific areas, such as live events and the provision of documentation

How often do developers use developer programs, and why?

What do developers value most in a developer program?

Where are developer programs wasting resources and how could they be better applied?




METHODOLOGY

This report is based on a large-scale online developer survey designed, produced, and carried out by VisionMobile over a period of five weeks between May and June 2015. Developer Economics 9th edition reached 13,000+ respondents from 149 countries around the world.

To eliminate the effect of regional sampling biases, we weighted the regional distribution across 8 regions by a factor that was determined by the regional distribution and growth trends identified in our App Economy research. Each of the separate

branches: mobile, desktop, IoT and cloud were weighted independently and then combined.

Within the survey specific questions asked about the use of developer support program. Developers were asked explicitly about which developer programs they used, and how they rated them against various criteria as outlined in the report. This data was combined with the segmentation and operational data gathered in the rest of the survey to draw up the comparisons of the significant platform players.


FULL REPORT TABLE OF CONTENTS

About the authors ······························································ 2

Table of contents ······························································· 3

Introduction ······································································ 4

The evolution of the developer ecosystem ···································· 4

The New Computing Value Stack Chart ····································· 6

The 5 ways developer can make money for those running developer programs ···································································· 8

Key questions answered in this report ··································· 11

What is a developer? ··································································· 13

Developer programs was a human art - now a science ·················· 19

Chapter 1 - Segmenting the Developer Community ················ 20

Self-Improvement ······································································· 21

Revenues from the app economy ················································· 21

Extending a business ·································································· 21

How developer segments inform ecosystem maturity ···················· 23

Chapter 2 - What is a developer program? ····························· 26

A developer program balancing act ·············································· 26

Measuring the success ································································ 27

Developers need breadth, as much as depth ································· 30

There has never been a better time to be a developer ··················· 31

Which do developers want from a developer program? ················· 32

Chapter 3 - Developer Program Benchmarks ························ 34

Program comparison ·································································· 34

Chapter 4 - Program Comparisons ······································ 43

New programs can still be successful but perhaps more targeted ··· 44

Conclusion ········································································ 47

Methodology ····································································· 49

[Appendix I] Developer Program Summaries ························ 50

Amazon ··················································································· 50

Apple ······················································································ 51

Facebook ················································································· 52

Google ···················································································· 53

Intel ························································································ 54

Microsoft ················································································· 56

Mozilla ···················································································· 58

Twitter ···················································································· 59

Yahoo, Samsung, Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, AT&T, Yandex ······ 59

[Appendix II] Developer Program Summaries ······················· 61


LIST OF GRAPHS & FIGURES

1. The emergence of developer types

2. The new computing value stack

3. 5 ways developers can extend your business model

4. Top 15 developer programs, ranked by usage

5. Regional differences in developer age

6. Regional differences in developer education

7. Regional differences in participation in developer programs

8. Developer segments

9. The use of developer program resources across segments

10. The evolution of developer ecosystems

11. Developer program loyalty

12. Developers in a multi-screen world

13. The competition for developer attention

14. What developers expect of a developer program, by segment

15. Developer programs attributes rated by developers

16. Developer programs attributes rated by importance

17. Developer ranking of third-party support channels

18. Developer programs attributes rated by segment

19. Usage of support programs, by segment

20. Overall ranking of support programs


ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Bill Ray Senior Analyst You can reach Bill at: [email protected] @bill4000

Bill wrote his first mobile app in 1988, and has been failing to make money out of them ever since. He architected set-top boxes at Swisscom and Cable & Wireless, and was Head of Enabling Technology (responsible for on-device software) at UK mobile network O2. He then spent eight years as a journalist at tech publication The Register, before joining VisionMobile as a senior analyst.

Christina Voskoglou Director of Research and Operations You can reach Christina at: [email protected] @ChristinaVoskog

Christina leads the analyst team and oversees all VisionMobile research and data projects (big or small!), from design to methodology, to analysis and insights generation. She is also behind VisionMobile’s outcome-based developer segmentation model, as well as the Developer Economics reports and DataBoard subscription services. While at VisionMobile, Christina has led data analysis, survey design and methodology for the ongoing Developer Economics research program, as well as several other primary research projects.

Michael Vakulenko Strategy Director You can reach Michael at: [email protected] @mvakulenko

Michael has over 18 years’ experience in mobile and telecom starting from working on first experimental 3G systems in Qualcomm. Later on Michael was part of several startups developing products in the areas of wireless, enterprise networking and mobile apps. At VisionMobile Michael works at the cross section of business models, economics and technology where he leads strategy practice for software-centric business models in mobile, Internet of Things and Connected Car.

Clive Howard Software Consultant You can reach Clive at: [email protected]

Clive, a technology consultant and Entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience in the web industry, is a principal analyst at Creative Intellect Consulting (CIC) focusing on mobile and the Internet of Things. He has a passion for innovation and technology that demonstrates sustainable benefits for businesses and their customers.

IoT Report Series | The Smart Home Landscape 2015 | © VisionMobile 2015 | All rights reserved | Report sample Get in touch or purchase the full report at: vmob.me/SmartHome15 9

INTRODUCTION

Using data gathered from more than 13,500 developers, across 149 countries, we examined what developers want from a Developer Program, and which companies are successfully delivering it. Developers were asked what they value most about the programs they use, and how often they use them, creating a comparative scale which enables developer programs from different industries to be compared.

Platform, device, and infrastructure vendors, from Amazon to Samsung, are helping developers get more stuff done while writing less code. In this report we compare 15 of the biggest

developer outreach programs, seeing what they offer and how developers value them. Some of these programs have galvanised a community since the early 90s, while others are new to the game or struggle to garner support, but all of them are hoping to attract developers to their respective technology.

A good developer program does not guarantee the success of a technology, but a poor developer program will certainly contribute to its failure. Find out who is succeeding, and who is failing, in Developer Programs Benchmarking 2015.


DEVELOPER PROGRAMS AREN’T JUST TECH SUPPORT

Developer programs will have different aims and objectives, and have evolved in different ways. In many instances a Developer Program can emerge from internal projects that standardise how departments can share resources within the same company.

This variation in origins, and objectives, makes it hard to compare achievements. The program is not an end in itself, but rather a way of attracting developers to the platform or technology, so the success of a developer program can only be gauged against the adoption of the technology it is prompting.

We can, as a proxy for the success of a developer program, examine the rate of usage rather than the number of developers using it. This won’t work for function-specific platforms; such as PayPal where a developer will engage to solve a specific problem, but for larger concerns it will tell us how often a developer turns to the official channels to find solutions to the problems they are facing.

Here we can see how the larger developer programs compare, and how effective Google has been in supporting developers. We can see that almost half of those using Google’s developer programs are visiting every day, not only demonstrating that the utility of the Google programs but also creating opportunities for Google to stay in touch with its developer community.


DOCUMENTATION AND SAMPLE CODE AREN’T EVERYTHING, JUST NEARLY EVERYTHING

When we asked developers what they valued most it was no great surprise that documentation and sample code come top by a clear margin. For both mobile and desktop developers documentation was the most important feature cited by approximately 80% of respondents. Sample code was not far behind with over 70% of developers considering it to be one of the most important program features. The better these features were rated, in the context of a given program, the better that program fared in terms of frequency of use.

Developers who are time poor and often straying into new technologies, find it quick and easy to cut and paste sample code into their applications. Developers who work across projects will gravitate to developer programs that offer a good range of examples in the form of code samples and snippets and with clear concise documentation, because it saves them time.

These have become table stakes in developer programs but it doesn’t mean everyone is getting it right. Only four of the 16 programs scored above the average: Google, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla. These turned out to be the most highly ranked programs overall. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed had a negative view of Yahoo’s documentation and over a quarter of its sample code.


DEVELOPERS VALUE A THIRD-PARTY VIEW

In recent years Stack Overflow has become the primary place for developers to ask questions, and get answers from their peers, and is the most prominent of the support websites which developers ranked as fourth most important. That the site was originally built to work very effectively with Google search has meant that many developers turning to Google quickly find their way onto Stack Overflow, but other resources such as Instructables and Quota are also increasingly important.

That so many developers use Stack Overflow has enabled it to become self-perpetuating as the ‘go to’ resource for developers. Over 10 million questions have been asked and more than 16 million solutions provided. They claim that over 8 million developers use the site every day, which in a total developer population estimated at 18 million is a significant number.

Github is another very popular site that provides public and private code repositories. It has become popular amongst developers for hosting code publicly for others to contribute to or use. Organisations including vendors are now jumping onboard and many developer programs including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon will have code examples on Github, while Intel works closely with Instructables to ensure its technologies are well represented.

Interesting to note is that these channels rank as more important to developers than similar offerings from the program owners. While dedicated forums (provided by the vendor) were cited by 20.5% of mobile developers, and 24.5% of desktop developers, as being

important this was short of the 31% (mobile) and 30.1% (desktop) for third party sites. Vendor involvement with those third-parties also varied widely, developers felt many companies were not adequately engaged with the wider community.




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distilling market noise into market sense

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