69% of all smartphone app developers earn less than $US1000 per month: Survey

Nearly 70% of all app developers are earning less than $US1000 ($A1066) per month, according to a global survey of 10,000 app developers compiled by analytics firm Vision Mobile.

The alarming figures show 50% of Apple iPhone (iOS) developers and 64% of Google Android developers earn less than $US500 per app per month, and 47% of developers earn less than $100 per month. At the other end of the spectrum, the 1.6% of developers earning more than US$500,000 per month make more than the other 98.4% of app developers combined.

The figures show 67% of app developers primarily target consumers, followed by 16% targeting enterprises and 11% targeting professionals.

Despite this, enterprise apps are far more lucrative for developers, with 57% of enterprise app developers earning at least $500 per month, compared to just 26% for consumer apps.

Globally, Android controls 79% of the smartphone market, with Apple iOS (16%), Windows Phone (3%) and BlackBerry (1%) trailing. Despite this, Android is a priority for just 42% of developers, followed by iOS (32%), Windows Phone (10%) and BlackBerry (3%).

Among many other metrics, the figures also broke down the numbers of the primary language used by developers. It showed 26% of mobile app developers primarily use Java, followed by Objective-C (17%), HTML/CSS/JavaScript (17%), C# (14%), C/C++ (10%), JavaScript (3%), PHP (1%) and Ruby (0.5%).