VisionMobile’s annual Developer Economics survey tracks the reality of developing apps across a wide range of platforms and thousands of coders around the world. It’s important because it is based on direct feedback from developers themselves rather than aggregate stats from platform providers.

VisionMobile’s recent blog post highlights a finding consistent across platforms and markets:

Spending more on development only slightly increases the chances of making a profit, while increased spending on design and marketing are strongly correlated with higher probability of making significant profits.

While MEX readers will no doubt have been espousing the value of design investment for some time, the VisionMobile survey may be a useful source of empirical data to justify such an approach.