Iranian App Developers Earned $13.7m in 1 Year

EghtesadOnline: Iran’s largest Android app market, Café Bazaar, released a report at the weekend saying that there are 7,000 active application developing teams in the country and 20,700 people work for the rapidly expanding sector.

News ID: ۷۸۱۸۷۷

24 February 2018

Published in a blog post on Café Bazaar, the report states that during the past Iranian fiscal that ended in March 2017, Iranian developers collectively earned 650 billion rials ($13.7 million). Some 1,400 app developing companies are registered.

Since there is no reliable data on the activities of local programmers and companies, reports like the one Bazaar publishes on its website is the only source to get an idea about what is going on in this industry.

According to Bazaar’s report, 63% of the programmers have academic education in ICT fields. The report notes that the companies which employ programmers with academic education have been more successful. An estimated 23% of the programmers are women, Financial Tribune reported.

Some 4% of the programmers are game developers claiming a 30% share of the industry’s total turnover. On average each Iranian developer team has released 7 programs.

According to the report, the province of Tehran with 10,211 developers has the largest share in the industry in terms of payroll with 32.9%, followed by Khorasan Razavi 8%, Fars 1,846 (6%), Khuzestan 5.1%, West Azerbaijan 4.8%, Isfahan 4.8% and Alborz 4.1%.

Half of the industry’s annual turnover is is generated by Tehran-based firms, followed by Khorasan Razavi 15.1%, Isfahan, 8.9%, Alborz 3.1%, Mazandaran 2.6%, Fars 2.5% and Golestan 2%.

Café Bazaar has 35 million active users and is the largest app publisher in the country.

According to an earlier report by Bazaar, the most downloaded applications during the three months  between Sep. 23-Dec. 21 were messengers with 1.7 million downloads followed by video streaming services (837,000), mobile tools (635,000), shopping (610,000), social media platforms (548,000), photo editing apps (530,000) and transportation including ride-hailing and ride-sharing apps (511,000).

Every week on average 600 people downloaded a messenger app and 1,000 update the messengers they already had installed on their handsets. Similarly,  400 people downloaded social media apps and about 900 updated their apps every week.

Over the years the ICT sector and application of mobile phones have improved and expanded  significantly in Iran. According to published data there are 85 million active SIM cards in Iran and local operators say they have 47 million active mobile Internet subscribers.