Surprising Lack Of App Building Exposure Among UK ICT Professionals

Even though the world is increasingly mobile, more than half of developers have never built a mobile app, a new survey shows.

A survey called Telerik State of Mobile Development, conducted by Telerik, a Progress company, asked 3,000 IT professionals about mobile development.

Among the biggest issues developers have with building mobile apps is the fact that a lot of them are still new to mobile development or have never built a mobile app (57 per cent), while others develop just one functional mobile app a year (47 per cent).

Constraints and constantly changing development practices and technology is an issue for 16 per cent of developers, while others struggle with the lack of time (19 per cent) and the lack of tools (15 per cent).

Among the key reasons for building a mobile app was improved operational efficiency, new revenue opportunities (39 per cent), increased employee productivity (38 per cent), improved customer service (35 per cent) and the possibility to engage customers in a more meaningful way (34 per cent).

User experience is the most important element to consider when building these apps. Forty-four per cent of those surveyed said user experience is the most important, followed by ease of maintenance (24 per cent), performance (15 per cent) and security (11 per cent).

“The most poignant finding of the survey is that 57 per cent of developers have never built a mobile app, indicating that mobile app development remains highly specialized,” said Karen Tegan Padir, President, Application Development and Deployment, Progress. “It’s clear that the developer community as a whole needs easy-to-use tools and processes to move forward with their mobile app development efforts in a more substantial way.”

The full report can be found on this link.