Developer Programs Benchmarking 2015 Sample Report

Developer Programs Benchmarking 2015 | © VisionMobile 2015 | All rights reserved | Report sample
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Copyright © VisionMobile 2015 - v.1.0
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
Also by VisionMobile
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The Industrial IoT Landscape
2015
IoT Developer and Platform
Landscape 2015
Cross-Platform Tools 2015 Databoard
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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:
bill@visionmobile.com
@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:
christina@visionmobile.com
@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:
michael@visionmobile.com
@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:
clive@creativeintellectuk.com
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.

Findout about our reportsubscriptionoptions
Contact:
Andrea Williamson
andreaw@visionmobile.com
Director, Client Services
Tel: +1 831-471-5730

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Developer Programs Benchmarking 2015 Sample Report

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