With the increasing number of technology frameworks and platforms and the increasing variety of form factors, developers need new types of skills to compete in today’s marketplace.

Each year our customers are spending more time learning different skills and we see them splitting their efforts in developing desktop, web, mobile phone, and tablet apps.

The following discussion is based on a DiscountASP.NET world-wide survey which was conducted in March 2013. We received a total of 1,308 responses. We’ll limit the discussion by looking at responses from our U.S.-based and U.K.-based customers. We had 840 responses from the U.S and 102 responses from the U.K.

We asked our customers where the main focus of their app development efforts will be in 2013. When comparing the results between our US and UK customers, 83% of the UK customers will spend time focusing on developing web apps, compared to 78% of our U.S. customers. However, more U.S. customers will spend their app development effort on mobile phone apps in 2013 than U.K. customers, 59% versus 52%, respectively.

When we look a little deeper by segmenting our U.S. customers by their hosting age, we found that our younger customers tend to be developing mobile phone apps more than our older customers. The U.S. customer survey results show that 52% of the 5-years or older customers will spend time focusing on developing mobile phone apps, compared to 70% of customers who signed up an account with us in 2012.

The study found that our recently acquired customers are focusing more of their time developing mobile phone apps than our older customers. This indicates that our newly acquired customers have, in general, equipped themselves with newer programming skills or are emphasizing modern platforms more.