The market for app development services is set to grow to $100bn (around £62.4bn) by 2015, accoding to a study by research2guidance.
The development service market today is already twice as big as the app download market, says the company. Development services include solutions for app creation, management, distribution and extension. research2guidance says that in the 18 months that followed the launch of the Apple App Store in 2008, the application developer market overtook the app download market in revenue size.
“With increasing smartphone and application penetration, companies have a vital need to be in this market and fuel the demand for app development services,” says Egle Mikalajunaite, senior research analyst at research2guidance.
According to the company, 66 per cent of all apps are developed by third-party application developers. “This share will increase over the next years, as more and more companies want to publish applications but dont have the resources in-house,” says research2guidance. 
The company says that the level of competition in app stores and the high rates of failure, combined with a push by enterprises to have a presence on the mobile app world, made app development tools a profitable business. “Selling the spades became a much more reliable and bigger business than digging for the gold,” says Ralf-Gordon Jahns, research director at research2guidance.
These findings form part of research2guidances The Market For Mobile Application Development Services: Selling The Spades For The App Gold Diggers, which can be purchased here.
