WeMedia published China wechat app developers 2013 report on November 22 2013, the first report about Chinese wechat app developing industry situation.
According to WeMedia, Tencent launched wechat official platform in August 2012. At the same time, native app is not suitable for most enterprises, because it has high costs and few core functions, and it requires frequent app updates while its using frequency is relatively low. With more and more mobile open platforms, many enterprises turned to develop public platform based apps.
The number wechat app developers were growing, many developers made transitions from native app to wechat app. The chart above showed wechat developers type and developing time. We could tell 72% developers were companies, and 43% of team had 6-10 people. 51% wechat developers were transferred from online product development industry, and 49% of them transferred within a year.
62% of Wechat app were free. The three main services offered by developers were CRM, wechat app webpage development and customized development.
Wechat app clients geographic distribution was in accordance with internet development, most clients were from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Zhejiang province.
Sales pattern of wechat app developers was still very traditional, and their revenue hadn’t increase yet.
Only 21% of developers were losing money, income statements of developers seemed good. With multiple services, it would generate more income in the future.
Developers had many high quality clients, however their development process took too long time.
More and more developers were transferred from other public platforms to wechat official platform.
Still, Chinese wechat app developers faced many problems. No developers had achieved over 10 million yuan revenue (USD 16,308). Most developers focused on developing products, they didn’t have enough brand building awareness. What’s more, most products were identical to each other, developers lacked deep understanding of consumer needs. And it’s difficult to do secondary development on exist products. Most developers couldn’t offer complete mobile end solutions to clients.