How much does it cost to develop a mobile app?

With mobile becoming a part of our daily lives, it is simply impossible to think of a life without the same. What tends to be surprising is the number of increasing smartphone users (over 1 billion) across the world. Moreover, it has also become an essential component determining a business’ success. With the penetration being wide and deep, the market of mobile apps is also steadily growing. A number of users as well as businesses are also fast catching up with the concept of using it like magic to benefit from the distinct ideas of application development.

Therefore, what comes up as the common question of the day is how much does it actually cost to develop a mobile app. Prior to focusing on the cost aspect, it is essential to find out the aspects that influences the development cost largely, which can turn out to be simple, fairly difficult, and complex. Here is a look:

• Project scale
• OS versions
• Developer’s salary
• Development resources

So, what will be the cost?

Here is a detailed look at some analyses as well as estimates that might help you go ahead with the task with some practical expectations:

General Cost of App Development : According to Forrester Research, development cost of an iPhone application usually takes minimum six-month full work-time and costs anything between $20,000 and $150,000. Similarly, another article posted in padgadget.com throws good light on creating your own applications along with the costs that is involved.

A wonderful, but simple app takes around one-week development time and costs around $6,000. The server-side is likely to need 2 weeks of work time costing around $12,000. Likewise, the application can be written in 2 weeks time, costing around another $12,000. The other costs of the task usually involve debugging, project management, yearly hosting fee, as well as unforeseen delays adding up to $5,000. This way the total budget ends up being $35,000.

The article also highlighted that a sophisticated game app can effortlessly run over Twenty Thousand dollars.

Now, what emerges as a problem with these kinds of estimates is the fact they usually represent the users interested in developing general consumer applications and sell them in the app store. It does not pertain to the varied range of apps that facilitates business processes with the help of mobile use.

App development costs for Businesses: A survey conducted by AnyPresence (a back-end service company) in 2013 questioned the IT professional about the initial cost of developing a usual mobile application. The answers of more than 50 per cent professionals revealed spending over $50,000 taking over 3 month’s time while, a percentage close to quarter revealed spending more than $100,000.

Propelics (app development company) specializing in iPad apps published a useful blog highlighting the cost breakdown of iPad app development. The post actually discusses three complexity levels of enterprise application in respect to the costs. Here is a look –

• Simple Enterprise App - $50,000 (+/- 20%)
• Medium Enterprise App - $100,000 (+/- 20%)
• Complex Enterprise App - $150,000 (and up)

Features that a mobile application of $100,000 range includes are extremely tuned user experience along with integration leveraging the existing capabilities of the enterprise. When it comes to the infrastructure of mobile application management as well as mobile device management, the category upgrades to $150,000+ range.

Similarly, a post published on mobile-ent.biz focused on a detailed app development cost estimate. The report states that the cost of creating a cross-platform app using the conventional development techniques never comes under £100K.

The focus was on the design, development, and testing costs in respect to one or multiple platform. Here is a look at the estimates:

• An application that extorts data from database and follows a simple list exhibition usually takes 4-8 weeks time and costs around $26,000 on a single platform.
• An application featuring server-side incorporation and offline data caching takes around 8 – 12 weeks time and costs $71,000 for two platform developments.
• A complete enterprise app featuring business processes takes around 3-6 months and costs around $150,000 for three platform developments.

However, it is to be noted that mobile app development should never be viewed as one-time cost. Even if you have your internal development team, a clear assessment involving both short as well as long-term costs should be estimated before taking to the practice. You can hire developers from top mobile app development companies who can help you build mobile apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide mobile app development services. If you would like to discuss with an expert mobile app programmer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.