News

Dev Firm Provides Guidance on Cost, Time Frames for Creating Mobile Apps

• By David Ramel
• January 31, 2018

A mobile app development company has published guidance on the cost and time frames involved with building different kinds of mobile apps.

To determine the average cost and time associated with mobile apps, Hyperlink Infosystem based its data on more than 1,000 Android, iOS and Windows apps it created.

The firm claimed it saw a 500 percent increase in the number of free mobile apps that have been downloaded in the past five years. Going forward it said, mobile apps will leverage new trends such as cloud-based apps, mobile apps for working with the Internet of Things (IoT), wearable apps, augmented reality and blockchain for better security.

Of course, the cost of building a mobile app differs greatly in different countries, with U.S.-based dev shops liable to charge 10 times as much for apps created in some areas, but the firm provided some rough guidance for the resources involved in developing different kinds of apps, ranging from apps for booking taxis or restaurants, social media and some business-specific apps.

With all the different factors involved, the general guidance includes wide variations in cost and time estimates. Take, for example, a social media app. "Generally, social media apps are used to share photos, videos, chatting etc.," the company said. "There are more advanced features which allow users to share live videos etc.

"So in a broad idea, the cost to make a social app is between $10,000 to $60,000. Estimated time frame varies between 2.5 months to 6 months." A taxi booking app, meanwhile, would see costs varying from $20,000 to $35,000 over four to five months.

In 2015, another mobile app development company published similar guidance. At that time, Nine Hertz said it takes about 18 weeks to develop and publish a typical native mobile app, with 10 weeks needed for back-end coding and eight weeks devoted to constructing the front end.

For the new report from Hyperlink Infosystem, the company summed up the entire process here.

"This survey is exclusively for those who are planning to invest their money in app development and technology," said CEO Harnil Oza. "We wanted to prepare a whole guideline for mobile app development cost and time-frame and that was the focus of this survey."