Are there any studies showing what percentage of software developers are building internal applications as opposed to consumer applications?

Question

I have always wondered what the industry-wide breakdown is between internal/IT applications (e.g. intranet apps, custom reporting, payroll, or related enterprise software) and consumer applications (e.g. Facebook, Yahoo, Google, e-commerce sites), or other types of software like embedded, mobile, systems software, etc. I do realize that the lines are not always so clear, but it would be interesting to see some high-level data on this.

I have always suspected that the large majority of software developers are building IT applications, but have never come across any specific studies or research showing or disproving this.

1) What percentage of developers are building internal/enterprise applications, as opposed to the other categories?

2) What is the breakdown, in terms of dollars spent, for development in each category?

I would appreciate any links to any industry research for this kind of information.

Answer 1

Remember that most of the consumer apps were initially built for internal use.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University.[5] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Answer 2

There is no statistical numbers (to my knowledge) on how much development resource is spent on internal apps and Enterprise apps. But surely there is a change in trend nowadays that many developers are consumerising their internal apps.

Example: Google gadgets. Many of these gadgets are developed for internal purpose. But once a developer tastes the interest people show on their gadget, he further moves on and builds enterprise app on top of it. This is how many good consumer products are evolving.

Thanks, Nirmal

Answer 3

I'm not sure the distinction is so clear. For instance I work on software that clients of our company use (i.e. people who don't work for our company), but its also not available to the general public. So its not an internal app but its also not completely external. That may be why its hard to get statics on something like this. There's a lot of gray area.