According to research2guidance, companies paid $20.5 billion for mobile development services in 2011. The mobile development services category includes things like application creation, management, distribution and extension. That’s about three times as much as the $6.8 billion end users paid for downloads last year.
The company’s report also notes that the average fee for mobile development services varies widely by country. For example, while UK developers charge about $626 per day for app creation services, their counterparts in India charge just $138 per day on average. Ralf-Gordon Jahns, co-founder of research2guidance warns, “App development partners using price as the main criteria for selection will not be lead to an optimal solution as most of the price differences are offset by the additional time needed by offshore app developers.”
