App discovery is the biggest challenge: Mac developers

According to the latest report, the latest annual Setapp survey of Mac developers reports that how apps are discovered is a major problem, but more than half of developers plan to launch new macOS apps in 2022.
In the sixth edition of its annual survey, Setapp asked developers questions about distribution, Apple Silicon, and the war in Setapp’s home country of Ukraine.

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App discovery is the biggest challenge faced by 57% of developers, according to a May 2022 survey of 354 respondents from 37 countries. 52% of developers say acquiring users after discovering an app is their main problem, while 51% have the biggest difficulty with marketing.

In fourth and fifth place were 27% who said their problem was a lack of recurring revenue, such as subscriptions, while 22% said overall revenue was a challenge. As for subscriptions, 26% of developers are currently using it, while 31% said they would consider it. About 11% said they’d given up on a subscription model, while a total of 23% said they wouldn’t consider it, or absolutely wouldn’t.

29% of developers distribute apps only through the Mac App Store, and 29% don’t use the Apple Store at all. However, 42% said they use both. As for the development work itself, 63% of Mac app developers are developing Apple Silicon apps for their work. But 71% have released a version of the app optimized for M1.

Headquartered in Ukraine, Setapp has been directly affected by the war with Russia, and Setapp has also surveyed developers around the world. “Nearly 70 percent of respondents felt some impact from Russia’s war on Ukraine, with 9 percent being significantly or severely affected,” the company said.

Setapp also stated that “68% of people would rather or fully support using product features or creating new features to help Ukrainians.” 53% of developers “equitably or fully support their colleagues to stop [ping] using Russian-originated features.

(via)