Introduction
We all know that mobile apps are a great way to reach your audiences and expand your business. Most marketing strategists consider mobile applications to be an integral part of their marketing strategy, the number of smartphone users is increasing day by day, and is expected to go up to 3.8 billion, by the end of the year 2021.
Mobile apps help businesses to generate revenue, and entrepreneurs are usually in search of quality mobile app development services, which can help them create their dream app. They reach out to various app development companies to compare their services and prices, as everyone wants to get an app that is high in quality and low in budget.
Based on hourly rates, design, features, the OS on which the app is developed, and on many other factors, the app development cost varies from company to company. The cost can be as low as $10,000 and can go as high to $1 million+. However, as aforementioned, the more complex your app is, the more it will cost you.
So, as of now, you must have gotten the basic idea of how does the cost of an app is calculated. But we know that there are still a few questions about how does an Android app development company determines the cost, which you have in your mind. In this blog, we tried to answer most of the questions related to the factors that add up to the development cost of an Android app.
In this blog, our approach will be answering some of the most asked questions about Android app development cost
To make things even simpler, appended are the points, which are discussed in detail further, to help you to understand things better:
• Why the Android app?
• Does location affect the cost of development?
• Does the experience of the developer and development team size matter?
• How does the complexity of an app affect the cost of its development?
• Are there any other costs involved?
Let’s begin with answering some of the most asked questions regarding Android mobile app development cost.
Why the Android app?
Most entrepreneurs are often confused, if they are planning to have only one app? Which OS should they go for? And if both, which platform should they prefer first?
According to gs.statcounter, though the US has about 57.42% iOS users over 42.35%, if we talk globally, there are 74.3% Android users over 24.76% iOS users.
So, if you are aiming to acquire users globally, having an Android application for your business is a must-have.
Read Also: A Complete Guide to Mobile App Development Cost
Does location affect the cost of development?
This is one question that most people ask. Yes, location plays a major role in deciding the cost of app development. The developers in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada usually charge more than the app developers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
If you talk about hourly rates, in North America, developers usually charge around $60-$350, which entirely depends on the type of application you want for your business.
In Asian countries like India, the app development cost is comparatively low and the hourly rate for an Android app developer ranges around $15-$80, again based on the complexities involved in your app it could go higher.
Does the experience of the developer and development team size matter?
To be honest, the more experienced an Android app developer is, the more will be his hourly rates. Experienced developers gain immense expertise over time, which helps them to create a better application. Your app development majorly depends on the development team you choose, as they are the ones who will work on bringing your idea into existence.
A mobile application development company generally has a project manager, UI/UX designers, graphic designers, developers (the number depends on the project size), and quality analysts. They all play an important part, and work together on your application, for the project’s successful development. The cost of app development is usually based on the total average hourly rates of the development and designing team.
How does the complexity of an app affect the cost of its development?
The more complex your app is, the more will be its cost. A simple Android app will cost you much lesser than a one has intricate design and features.
Let us break it down for you, how the app development process works. So, there are various stages through which an application goes through, before becoming live. It involves the collaboration and work of various departments that work on creating your app. These departments invest their time analyzing all the possibilities to offer you the best possible results. The whole development process takes time, and as the Android app development is based on an hourly rate, this affects the bottom-line cost of your app.
1) Design Sprint
This process starts with Design Sprint. It is a five-phase process that usually takes 5 days to complete. This is done with all new app ideas to pre-analyze all the risks involved. Comprehensive market research is done to determine the practicality of an app. Competitor analysis is the major part of this process to check all the related apps in the market and what features they are offering to their users.
Since every business wants to be on top in terms of user experience, all the data is collected related to the user’s requirement. Also, applications are developed to generate revenue. So before developing them, factors like the app’s fund raising possibilities and revenue-generating capacity are considered.
2) Designing
Next comes the designing phase. Designing constitutes approx. 25% of the development time. It usually takes about 12-15 days for a designer to design the app. Again, this is based on the design you choose. If you choose a pre-defined template, it will take less time. But if you are looking for a highly customized and complicated design, like including different animations and graphics, it will take more time.
Read Also: How Much Does it Cost to Develop an iOS App?
3) Programming
After the basic layout of the design is finalized, now comes the work of an Android developer, which is programming. This usually takes at most about 25-60 days, this again, completely depends upon the type of application you want.
The type of application, whether it is a cross-platform app or a native application, also determines its development cost. A cross-platform application offers an added advantage as it runs on multiple platforms. Furthermore, the code for cross-platform apps is only written once, and it can be reused again. This saves the time and effort of the developer. Whereas, native mobile apps are built extensively for use on one operating system which requires added work on coding, and eventually leads to a longer duration for the app to be developed.
4) Testing
Once the code is written and the app is developed, it goes through various steps of testing, which is done by a quality analyst. It normally takes 10-15 days to check the performance of the app and rule out the possibilities of crashes at any point of app usage. The tester ensures that the app developed is free from bugs and runs smoothly.
Almost every android application development company follows more or less the same process. The number of days required to create an Android mobile app is directly proportional to the complexities involved in creating it and thus increases the development cost.
Are there any other costs involved?
Other than the above-mentioned factors, there are various other factors like maintenance, optimization, and updating the app should also be considered. Once you introduce your Android app in the market, it must be optimized and updated based on the current requirements.
To make it cost-efficient and famous among your users, you should always try to improve it based on the latest trends. Any new product takes time, so in about a month or so, by using the analytics, you will be able to understand the demand of your app and user’s expectation from it. Keeping all this in mind, one should add these expected cost after developing the app to the bottom-line price.
Conclusion
We hope that we were successfully able to answer most of your questions and clear your doubts related to Android app development cost, and we hope you got an estimated cost idea by now. However, the app development cost is entirely based on your specific requirements and how you want your app to be developed. If you want to have a basic application with simple features it will cost less but if you are looking to have custom applications with complex features, they could be quite heavy on your pocket.
To make things simpler and easy to understand, we have divided each topic into smaller components, to help you have an estimated cost of Android app development. We have tried to cover each topic, in detail, to ensure that you get the most optimal app development cost.
So, if you are all set to get your Android app developed do not waste a minute and hire dedicated android developer, you should choose, according to your project requirements and someone who would be the best fit for your project, and of course most importantly, fits in your budget.
