IoT Development although novelty has come a long way in a past few years, many companies and enterprises have turned their attention towards the IoT Application Development for exploring better and untapped business opportunities. It has a great impact on our everyday life’s, work, management, transportation and much more. IoT Applications and devices are in every major and minor sphere of our life. According to statistics, in year 2016 alone $235 Billion were invested, which was 22% more than that in 2015 which only blew up in year 2017.
IoT industry is highly promising, there is a lot of investment that has been done in the industry. But the question is how much it costs to build up an IoT Application. It is one of the most frequently asked questions by anyone from a mobile app development company. There are many factors that decide the cost of IoT Application Development. Thus, here we are indicating in brief the cost and various factors of IoT Application development.
First things First
Before jumping into any kind of development whether Mobile app development, web development or IoT Development there are many questions that are important to be answered and taken in account thoroughly. Having an app development idea is just the beginning, thus before hiring a mobile app development company you must answer the following questions.
Questions such as why you need an IoT App development, what is the main motto behind it, what are your target audiences, what hardware are you going to target (like watches, glasses, headbands etc.), what features and functionalities are your requirement, what is your budget, the time you can invest in IoT Application development, opportunities and challenges in your industrial domain for the IoT, etc. are some examples of it that should be answered and given valuable attention to before jumping into mobile app development.
The purpose of answering these questions is to know the kind of development you seek and what technology will be able to render you all that functionality. It also saves time and makes it possible to dodge many fallouts in the development process.
Challenges of IoT Development
IoT as filled with opportunism is as challenging, given the technology is still new and there are many tools and technologies that are to be taken care of. For example, technologies such as social media, geo location, sync between multiple devices, multi user access are some of the high-end features that take up lot of time and money to develop, specially to integrate them to give away seamless communication between a user and device.
Technologies such as smart clothing, 3D imaging are still new, and a lot of things are still to be attended thus, you should have a clear vision and focus to what exactly is your requirement, what you want to create and what developers would be able to render you the kind of development.
Duration of Designing Stage
As we all know, for any development time and number of hours a developer spends on your project has a big role in deciding the cost of development, as is for IoT app development. When you hire iOS developer or android developer for getting an application development many factors can affect the time in the development stage.
Factors such as project size, your feature requirements, screens and platforms, added requests, use of new technology, complexity of the project and UI/UX development are some of them that affect the time required in IoT development.
Time taken to get an IoT Development
Time taken for developing an IoT application highly depends on the complexity of your project, features you want to relish in it and the developers team you have hired. Development of elements such as icons, features, screens and complexities play an important role in getting an estimation of time it is going to take to build you a functioning IoT application.
For a seeker of development that involves basic functionality of the application and wishes and requires standard UI and basic features in IoT application development it could take around 400-600 hours, while for if you are someone that require a little customization to UI, and a bit of complex features it can get around 600-800 hours. However, for a person with complex IoT development requirements such as large database, 3rd party integration and real-time synchronization with various devices it can take about 1000 hours and more.
You can hire iOS developers and android experts to get the development time estimation, there are many other factors that affect the total time required in developing a IoT Application Development. Some of which are geo location, payment integration, sync, 3rd party API’s and much more.
Team to build your IoT Application
Like any other app, IoT Application Development requires a team of expert and experienced developers that have extensive and liable knowledge of latest technology and development trends.
The team you will need for IoT Development, depends on your project requirement. For a basic project you will need a standard sized development team, i.e., 2 Developers, a Designer, a QA Engineer, a Project Manager.
For a project with bigger requirement you will need the standard team plus an extended team of IT Professionals. For e.g., you will need a Business analyst, a backend developer, panel designer etc.
On the other side of Development
After the designing and developing of IoT Application, you require a team to implement your project. IT professionals help you in implementing your IoT application which can be divide broadly into two parts i.e., Testing of IoT applications and deployment of it, it can take up to 35 to 171 hours in total. This step includes-internal testing of app, checking of app responsiveness, user tests, licensing, packaging and the launch.
Also, like all the other steps the time and cost of your project is influenced by many factors, the complexities of your project and many other external factors have a lot to do with overhead expenses of the IoT development. Things like the number of screens, security of an App, the support you want your app to render for devices running on different devices can change the time and cost estimated by you.
Post-Production and Maintenance
Development is not an end but a start of many other important stages of App development. You need to keep your app updated and be ready to deploy new and relevant features to always keep your game up. In the post production stage, it is very important that by far your IoT Development has gone aptly. Codes are done expertly and clearly to make things easy for other developer to comprehend make amendments, iterations and upgradations. This ensures your cost in maintaining will not exceed the budget as the more time your developer takes in comprehending the codes and writing iterations it can affect your budget tremendously.
Cost of IoT Apps of trending industries
There are many studies rounding to estimate the cost of developing IoT applications for leading industries. Industries like Media, Medical and Healthcare, Home Automation industry, manufacturing, energy management are some from which we encounter mostly in our day to day life. Many industries have adopted the IoT Development trend and the cost of development of these apps depends on the complexity of their project and business needs. For e.g., Media and industries like environmental monitoring can cost about $10,000 while industries with complex needs such as medical and home automation can take a toll on your pocket for about $30,000 and $50,000 respectively. Thus, we can say that technologies, features, and the unique needs of your project together give you a precise calculation of the cost of IoT Application Development.
Cost of developing IoT Apps for some other industry are Infrastructure Management and transportation industry from $25,000, Energy Management can vary from $27, 000 to $30, 00o while IoT Development for city management system will cost you about $50,000.
So, how much does IoT app development cost?
Even you have got your hold on many or all factors mentioned by far in the discussion, there is one another thing that can change everything and that is the difference in the rates of development of apps in diverse countries.
The rates of developing an IoT Application differs for country to country based on the size of enterprise, the standard cost of developers per hour, the size of the development country and so on.
Also, not always the high price of a development company is the assurance of the quality and not always trusting a low-costing developer can get you what you want. Also, it is seen offshore development can work really well sometimes; the odds of a failed project are low with the perks of lesser development time, plus development at low cost.
While looking forward to developing an IoT Application in North America can cost you about $50 – $150 US dollars per hour, in Eastern Europe the standard cost is $30- $50 US dollars per hour, while in India you can find a good developer at $25- $50 US dollars per hour.
Overall Cost Estimation
Referring to all the above-mentioned points the total cost for developing an IoT Application can be estimated on the basis of the project size, features specifications at: for a standard project with basic requirements it can reach $18, 000, as for medium sized project with some little customized needs can vary from $18,000 to $24, 000 US dollars, while complex projects can cost you about $30,000 US dollars.
