One of the key factors in the signaling and data bandwidth tsunami that is impacting wireless networks around the world are smartphone apps, which ping the network constantly so that users have the most updated data on demand.

While this is great for users, it’s not so great on the network or on smartphone battery life.

So is there any hope that network efficiency might become a priority for these developers?  Not according to a recent survey of 1,500 app developers by Vision Mobile, a market analysis and strategy firm.  The wide-ranging survey has a lot of great data on app profitability and other issues (reported here by Business Insider), but two things caught our eye.

When asked what matters most in picking an OS development platform, developers responded that a low-cost development platform is a close second only to a large installed base.  In another part of the survey, the developers said the average revenue from an app was between $1,200 – $3,900, which means there’s not a lot of budget for tweaking the network interface.

Continuing to follow the money, we now look revenue models.  When developers were asked how they were going to monetize their apps, advertising came in as the number one answer for 33% of the respondents.  Advertising increases the signaling rate of an app, in some cases to thousands of network connections per hour. So this is bad news for the network.

Carriers whose networks are under strain from today’s traffic and signaling loads will need to look elsewhere for relief.  SEVEN’s Open Channel traffic optimization solution is a great alternative because it dampens the impact of inefficient apps without developers making any changes.