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From the end-client, to
developer, to
advertising exec and
consumer, the
smartphone has
irrevocably changed
the world as we see it.
Embedding itself into
our everyday lives, the
smartphone has
reshaped the world as
we know it - and in
many ways is just
getting started.
Already a key industry for recruiters - this
QuickView highlights some of the lesser
known and potentially more interesting stats
about the state of the industry, details the top
in-demand development skills and lists 300
companies involved in the development,
design and delivery of mobile solutions you
should be working with in 2015.
Contents
10 Mobile Stats
Global Perspective
European Market
UK Developer Market
Top Skills
Future Predictions
300 creative agencies you
should be working with in 2015
Top Independent Development Companies
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1: The growth rate is
staggering
Forecast to be in the hands of 4 billion people
by 2020, the smartphone is one of the most
influential pieces of technology to impact on
daily life. In less than a decade, the world has
gone from less than half a billion people
online and zero smartphones to almost 3
billion people online with 2 million owning
smartphones.
2: The market is growing
year-on-year
The worldwide smartphone market grew 29%
year on year in the second quarter of 2014 in
terms of shipments.
3: Mind the gap - it’s
either luxury or rock
bottom
A gap in the market is appearing and Apple is
unfazed. By doing the seemingly impossible
last quarter (Q4 - ‘14) by selling more phones
at a higher average price, than in previous
quarters, Apple has sufficiently differentiated
itself from the mass of Android phones,
charging consumers on average two to three
times as much as they would pay for a com-
parable Android device. By contrast Xiaomi -
the world’s most valuable tech startup, worth
$46 billion, is manufacturing Android phones
at a much lower cost than its competitors,
creating a gap in the market and leading a
price war. The good news from the fight is
that hundreds of millions of people gain
access to the cheap but serviceable smart-
phones and Apple retains its brand values.
Xiaomi
$220
Andriod
$254
Apple
$687
Averageselling price for
smartphones without wireless
service contacts
Two Tiers
100
200
300
400
500
600
$700
2013 ‘14
4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q
0
.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
2014 2020
Smartphones People
Billion
Global
Smartphone Vendor
Marketshare (%)
Samsung 24.7%
Others 47.3%
Apple 15.0%
Lenovo-Motorola 7.2%Huawei 5.8%
The worldwide
smartphone market
grew 29%
year over year in the
second quarter of
2014
Source:ITU,a16z
Source: International Data Corporation (IDC)
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4: Downloads flow
faster than water
As the price of Android phones continue
to fall, mobile will impact on every part
of the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa, by
2019 3G coverage will be more
accessible than improved water and
electricity, with mobile users reaching
30%.
5: Global growth will be
fastest in developing
countries
The Asia/Pacific and Latin American
regions are expected to experience the
highest growth rate between 2013-17,
both with an annual growth rate of more
than 20 percent.
6: Mobile dominates
our attention
More time is spent in mobile apps than
all of the web. A report in 2014 by Ofcom
said UK adults spend an average of eight
hours and 41 minutes a day on media
devices, compared with the average
night's sleep of eight hours and 21
minutes. Whilst TV continues to
dominate the weekly exposure to
devices, the UK’s 14 and 15 year olds are
watching less live TV, and much less live
radio than adults - and turning to
YouTube and streaming music services
for their entertainment. In addition the
‘techie teens’ are giving up on voice calls
and email in favour of text-based
communication, flitting from Instagram
to WhatsApp to Snapchat in a constant
search for what's new.
Source: Statista 5-year compound annual growth rate of smartphone shipments worldwide from 2013 - 2017 by region.
Global Growth
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
Asia/Pacific
23.2%
Europe
11.1%
North America
7.8%
Latin America
23.7%
Middle East and
Africa
18.5%
Growthrate
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7: App usage is
increasing
8: Spending is up
The proportion of mobile internet users
purchasing goods increased from 20% to
24%, between 2013 and 2014. And these
shoppers, as well as growing in number,
are also spending more each quarter.
So too is mobile advertising
Mobile ad expenditure has doubled to
more than £1bn in 2013. With 2014 also
proving to be a big year for mobile ads, this
level of increase may yet be maintained.
9: UK leads Europe in
app development
Research from VisionMobile predicts that
the app economy will be worth nearly
£31bn to Britain by 2025. Over a third of
the revenues generated by all 28 European
member states come from the UK. In
addition, the UK leads the way in
smartphone ownership and spending on
mobile shopping and entertainment,
downloading more than 250m apps a
month, equivalent to four per British
citizen per month.
10: And finally… It’s
bigger than Hollywood
Apple paid $10 billion to developers in
2014. Put another way, in 2014 iOS app
developers earned more than Hollywood
did from the box office in the US. The app
economy also sustains more jobs (627,000
iOS jobs in the US vs. 374,000 in
Hollywood) is easier to enter and has a
wider reach.
Source: Flurry Analytics
Apps Dominate the Mobile Web
Mobile Advertising Expenditure
and Mobile Internet Takeup
0
200
400
600
800
1000
0
20
40
60
80
100
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Mobile advertising expenditure
Internet on mobile phone takeup0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
20%
80%
2013
14%
86%
2014
Percentageoftimespent
Apps Mobile web
Source:IAB/PwCDigitalAdspend2008-2013;Ofcomconsumerresearch
Expenditure ( £ Millions ) / UK adult take-up ( % )
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Global Perspective
The global smartphone market is expected
to reach $698 billion by 2020, with a
compound annual growth rate of 11.2%.
The global smartphone market is
dominated by Asia-Pacific region with
40.7% market share, followed by Europe
with 32.2% market share. Global
smartphone shipments are expected to
reach 3bn units by 2020.
So far, increasing usage of mobile internet
and services in major European and Asian
countries such as UK, Germany, India,
China, Indonesia and South Korea is driving
the growth of the global smartphone
market. In addition, a fall in average selling
price of smartphones is expected to fuel
the growth of the market over the forecast
period.
European Market
The European smartphone market
continues to expand, growing by nearly 14
percent in 2014 to achieve 200 million
shipments, despite the saturation of many
Western European markets, according to
research from Futuresource Consulting.
The European tablet market also continues
to grow, but major markets have reached
saturation point earlier than the industry
expected. Although percentage growth
equaled that of smartphones, Western
Europe tablet sales will slow further in
2015, with consumer shipments moving
into decline by 2017.
App Market
An important contributor to the growth of
the smartphone market is the App. With
over 2.5m apps available to download from
Google Play and the App Store and over 85
billion downloads in 2014 from the App
Store alone, the global demand for mobile
applications is playing a pivotal role in how
value is created, delivered and distributed.
According to Flurry Analytics overall app
usage grew by 76% in 2014. Interestingly,
the report confirmed how our phones and
tablets have become indispensable devices
that help us work and keep our lives organ-
ised with shopping, utilities and productivi-
ty apps experiencing triple-digit growth.
Notably, gaming dropped 31% in session
usage to occupy bottom place. Having
dominated the top spots, the fall in 2014 is
symptomatic of the growth of lifestyle
orientated apps. However, despite the
drop the gaming market is forecast to be
worth over $35bn and account for one
third of the total gaming market by 2017.
2013-2014 Year-Over-Year
Growth Rate
Source: Flurry Analytics
Lifestyle &
shopping
Utilities &
productivity
Messaging
social
Health &
fitness
Travel Sports News &
magazines
Music media
& entertainment
Games
0
50%
100%
150%
200%
AVERAGE 76%
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UK App Developer
Market
According to research from Google, the UK
is the largest app developer market in
Europe and accounts for more than a third
of revenues generated from mobile
software across the region.
Estimated to be growing at approximately
27% each year and be worth in excess of
£5.5 billion by end of 2015, the UK app
market is driven by an increase in
enterprise and B2B apps, strong growth in
startups, rise of mCommerce & monetising
apps and the broader appification of
services.
More than half of UK app companies are
based in Greater London (31%) and the
South East (24%), although outside London
& SE there are several app startup hubs
located in Brighton, Cambridge,
Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh.
Data from VisionMobile's UK App Economy
2014 report estimates that around 75,000
people are employed as professional app
developers & designers in the UK with
around 305,000 people employed in other
roles (sales, marketing, finance etc) by app
companies.
UK app companies are expected to
increase their developer team size by 7% in
the next 12 months, based on the UK App
Developer survey of 300+ developers that
VisionMobile conducted in May 2014. This
translates to a demand for 5,250 new
developer jobs among app companies.
With a healthy app development market
there is demand for non-technical roles
such as sales, marketing and project man-
agement. As companies mature, they seek
to add entrepreneurial and commercial
skills. Approximately 30,000 new jobs will
be created in the UK in the next 12 months
because of app companies.
31%
24%
5%
8%
9%
10% 5%
5%
2%
1%
Distribution of app companies
across UK
Data based on companies house data
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App
Development
Market
Employment
Figures
For the 6 months to 1st
February 2015, IT jobs
within the UK that cited
‘Mobile Developer’ in their
job title mentioned the
following IT skills in order of
popularity. The figures
indicate the number of jobs
and their proportion against
the total number of IT job
ads sampled with Mobile
Developer in their job title.
Top 10 Related IT Skills
1 Apple iOS
2 Android
3 Mobile App
4 iOS Development
5 Android Development
6 Agile Software Development
7 Objective-C
8 HTML
9 JavaScript
10 Java
Top 10 Sectors
1 Finance
2 Retail
3 Games
4 Back Office
5 Marketing
6 Financial Institution
7 Automotive
8 Automotive
9 Publishing
10 Multimedia
Top 10 Programming
Languages
1 Objective-C
2 JavaScript
3 Java
4 C#
5 SQL
6 C++
7 PHP
8 ActionScript
9 ActionScript 3.0
10 XAML
Top 10 Development
Applications
1 Git (software)
2 Xcode
3 Subversion
4 Appcelerator Titanium
5 Ant
6 Eclipse
7 JIRA
8 Jenkins
9 Maven
10 Cucumber
Source: IT Jobs Watch
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The next wave of tech
to connect with and
rival your Smartphone
Wearables
Only 9 percent of adult Internet users own
a smartwatch and just 7 percent have a
smart wristband, TechCrunch reported. At
the moment, wearables haven’t broken out
of a fairly narrow niche — typically a young,
expensive niche. They’re more popular
with men than with women, with those age
25 to 34, with affluent users and with those
in the Asia-Pacific region acording to
GlobalWebIndex.
Fitness Trackers
Expect several more wearable hybrid
devices that combine activity tracking with
smartphone notifications. Companies like
Sensoria are making everything from socks
and sports bras to fitness shirts that can
monitor your heart rate and other data.
However Fitness trackers, such as the Fitbit
or Jawbone days may be numbered. Many
next-generation smartphones are shipping
with the ability to track steps, calories,
heart rate and more, which industry
experts say could make fitness trackers
obsolete.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Four years have passed since augmented
reality (AR) apps for smartphones started
appearing in app stores for consumer use.
Conde Nast Traveler was one of the first to
use a simple version of AR with its app
guides for four popular tourist cities,
expect more of such apps to be made
available in the market in the years to
come.
In-Built Projector
Future smartphones will be turned into an
interactive gaming consoles without a need
for a TV screen; all you’ll need is a flat
surface. The technology already exists with
Samsung Galaxy Beam, but with ever-im-
proving technology, issues such as the
amount of the light emitting from the the
projects will be reduced, making projectors
a part of a new smartphone experience.
Connected Cars
The IoT-enabled “connected car” turns the
vehicle itself into a hub for an entire eco-
system of connected services that offer
consumers a wealth of benefits from
mobile hotspot, over the air updates,
greater infotainment, safety and security
and usage based insurance options. What’s
more, a new report claiming that Google
has plans to integrate its operating system
directly into vehicles in 2015 makes it very
likely that the next big platform war is
going to take place behind the wheel.
The Future for
Businesses:
Final Thoughts
Each wave of technology creates new
businesses. Life magazine was created
out of photography in the same way that
Buzzfeed was created from the internet
and social media. As the growth of
mobile is not constrained to one vertical,
in this instance the media industry,
mobile is remaking industries with Uber
(transport) and AirBnB (travel) as two of
the biggest innovators in the “sharing
economy”.
With increasing numbers of products
being offered with an app - from
toothbrushes to tour guides, businesses
are using mobile as a platform to extend
their brand reach and engagement.
Forecast to contribute £31bn to the UK
economy by 2025, the app development
market alone offers recruiters a wealth
of opportunities to make a valuable
contribution.
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Reference Shelf:
Apple Press Release
Asymco
Benedict Evans
comScore MobiLens
Futuresource Consulting
Gartner
GlobalWebIndex
GlobalWebIndex
health.usnews.com
Hongkiat
IAB / PwC
IT Jobs Watch
ITU, a16z
Recombu
Samsung Galaxy Beam
Sensoria
Smart Insights
Smartphone Market
Statista
Techcrunch
The Guardian
VisionMobil
Wall Street Journal
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383 Project
1000heads
360i
8th Light
Abacus e-Media
Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO
Adam & Eve/Ddb
Add People
Adido
Adtrak LLP
Affinity New Media
Agency Republic
agenda21
AIA Worldwide
ais London
AKQA
Albion
All of Us
Amaze
AnalogFolk
Apadmi Ltd
Appitized
Apptivation
Architect
Arnold Jones Associates
Design
Axonn Media
Ayima
B–Reel
BAE Systems Applied
Intelligence
Barrett Dixon Bell
Bartle Bogle Hegarty
Beta
BETC London
Beyond
Big
Big Al's Creative Emporium
Big Bit Ltd
BJL
Blonde
Bloom Agency
Bloom Worldwide
Blue Chilli Group
Blue Mungus
BMB
Branded3
Brass
Bray Leino
Bright Blue Day
Brightec
Brothers and Sisters
BWP Group
CACI
Campbell Hay
CDS Digital
Cheethambell JWT
CHI & Partners
Click Consult
Code Computerlove
Cognifide
Copeland & Charrington
Creature London
Critical Mass
CTI Digital
Cube3
Cyber-Duck
Cygnus Associates
DabApps
Dare Digital
Deeson
Delineo
Deloitte Digital UK
Designate
Dewynters
DigitasLBi
DLKW Lowe
dnx
Drummond Central
e3
E3 Creative
Ebay Enterprise
Eire Soft
Elmwood
Endava
Engine
Enigma Interactive
Enter
Epiphany
Equator
equimedia Limited
Essence Digital
Fallon London
Fan Studio
Fifth Ring
Five By Five
Fold7
Foolproof
Fox Communications
Fox Kalomaski Crossing
Freestyle Interactive
Fresh Egg
Fresh Group
Fueled
Fullsix UK
Future Platforms
G2G3 Digital
Golden Gekko
Golley Slater Group
Grand Visual
Grass Roots Group
Gratterpalm
Green River Media
Greenlight
Grey London
Group FMG
Gutenberg Networks UK
Harvest Digital
Havas Worldwide London
Haymarket Network
HeathWallace
Holler
Hometown London
HRG UK
Huge
Hugo & Cat
Hunterlodge Advertising
IBM Interactive Experience
iCrossing
Inferno
Innocean Worldwide UK
Intellectsoft Group
Intermarketing Agency
Investis.
iProspect
Iris
iris Worldwide
Isobar
IsobelJavelin Group
Jaywing
Jellyfish Group
JJ Marketing
Joint
Juice
JWT London
Karmarama
Keepthinking
Kitcatt Nohr
Kotikan
Krow Communications
Lab
Latitude Digital Marketing
Latitude Group
LBi
Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Leighton
Leith
Leo Burnett
Libertine
Light Maker
Linney Design
Locassa Ltd
Lowe Profero
M&C Saatchi UK Group
MadeByPi
MB Advertising & Marketing
MBA
McCann Erickson
McCann Manchester
Mcgarrybowen
Media Agency Group
Mediacom
METIA
Michon
Mind Candy
Mindshare
MMT Digital
Morris Hargreaves Mcintyre
Mother
Mr B & Friends
MRM Meteorite
MSL Group
Mubaloo Limited
MWO
Navigate Digital
Neo@Ogilvy
neoworks
Net Media Planet
Netcel
New Bamboo
New Gen Apps
Nodes
Oakley Mobile Ltd
Ogilvy & Mather
Omobono
One Two Four
Optima Graphic Design
Consultants Ltd
Orange Bus
Orchard Media and Events
Group Ltd
Outside Line
Pancentric
Pancentric Digital
Parker Design Consultants
Partners Andrews Aldridge
Pod 1
Poke
Portable Pixels
POSSIBLE
Precedent
Principles Agency
Proctor + Stevenson
Propellernet
Proximity London
Publicis
QBurst
Quiet Storm
R/GA London
Radioville
Rainey Kelly Campbell
Roalfe/y&r
RAPP
Rare Creative Group
Rawnet
Razorfish
Reading Room
Realise
Recipe
Red Bee Media
Redweb
Refinery Marketing Communi-
cations
Refractiv
Rippleffect
RJDA
Rokk Media
Rufus Leonard
S3 Advertising
Saatchi Masius
Salmon
SapientNitro
Selesti
Shout
Sigma Consulting Solutions
Silverbean
Souk
Southpaw
Spindrift
Stein IAS
Stickyeyes
Stink
Strawberry
Studio Output
Studio Six
Summit
Syzygy
300 creative agencies you should be working with in 2015