The tools available to mobile product managers can serve as a lifeline for those looking to gain an edge. The best Software Development Kits (SDKs) are meant to save you time and boost efficiency, along with helping to expand your knowledge base so you can make more informed decisions in your day-to-day work.
For today’s post, we tapped into the mobile product management community to find out what tools they rely on most by looking at apps in both the iOS and Android top charts, and added short descriptions so you can learn more. Hopefully you’ll be able to find a few new tools to implement to help your team reach your mobile goals.
Let’s take a look!
10 most used SDKs in iOS Top Charts
After combing through the App Store top charts, there was a clear pattern in the top 10 SDKs the leading iOS apps use. Here they are, in chronological order:
AdMob | AdMob by Google is an easy way to monetize mobile apps with targeted, in-app advertising. You can use the mobile advertising platform to generate revenue from your app, gather usage data, explore new analytics capabilities, and more.
DoubleClick | DoubleClick by Google is product suite for that manages ad-serving, ad delivery, and behavioral targeting. The tool helps you connect with the right people, in the right moments, with its integrated solutions.
Facebook | Facebook’s SDK helps you build engaging social apps and get more installs. From driving in-app revenue through ads to understanding your customers’ actions in your app through App Events, this tool helps app publishers connect with people in a meaningful, intelligent way.
AFNetworking | AFNetworking is a networking framework for iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS. It’s built on top of the Foundation URL Loading System, extending the powerful high-level networking abstractions built into Cocoa. The tool also offers a robust community of developers who use and contribute to it daily.
Unity | Unity is a development platform for creating 2D and 3D multiplatform games and interactive experiences. It’s one of the world’s most popular platforms, offers an in-depth learning center for customers to get the most bang for their buck, and hosts an active community forum where people can ask and answer questions about the tool.
Bolts | Bolts is a collection of low-level libraries designed to make developing mobile apps easier. It’s libraries are written in Android, Swift, Objective C, and Java, and can be found on GitHub.
Fabric | Fabric is a suite of tools that help you build the best apps with ease. While there are many tools today that help you track crashes or user behavior within your apps, Fabric allows you to keep all of your critical data in a single, intuitive dashboard.
Chartboost | Chartboost is the leading marketplace for you to maximize revenue and acquire new players. The tool helps app publishers monetize their apps, acquire new customers, track performance, improve their ad experience, and more.
UnityAds | UnityAds allows you to monetize and engage your entire player base with video ads. The tool is designed to become a natural part of your game that enhances your players’ experience, without interrupting them with poorly-timed ads.
Twitter | Twitter’s SDK is a part of the Fabric product suite, and is called MoPub. MoPub’s primary function is to help app publishers manage their ad inventory in an easy, simplistic manner.
10 most used SDKs in Android Top Charts
We pulled the top charts from Google Play to locate the 10 SDKs used in the most popular Android apps. Here’s what we found, in order of first to last:
Unity | Unity is a development platform for creating 2D and 3D multiplatform games and interactive experiences. It’s one of the world’s most popular platforms, offers an in-depth learning center for customers to get the most bang for their buck, and hosts an active community forum where people can ask and answer questions about the tool.
FMOD Studio | FMOD Studio is an adaptive audio tool and engine for games. It offers an in-depth educational training courses and videos to help customers get the most use out of the tool, along with an active Q&A center to make integration and usage easy.
GoogleFit | GoogleFit is an open platform that lets users control their fitness data, developers build smarter apps, and manufacturers focus on creating amazing devices. Their Sensors API, Recording API, and History API help make building fitness devices easier.
Apache Flex | Apache Flex is for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. The tool simplifies the download and installation process of the Apache Flex® SDK and its required components.
Android Studio | Android Studio provides the fastest tools for building apps on every type of Android device. The tool offers world-class code editing, debugging, performance tooling, a flexible build system, and an instant build/deploy system all allow you to focus on building unique and high quality apps.
GoLauncher EX | GO Launcher EX is a popular Android launcher with thousands of themes and features to customize each user’s home screen experience. The tool helps increase engagement and monetization based on personalization tactics.
Google Cloud Platform | Google’s Cloud Platform allows you to run your application using the same technology and tools used at Google. With so many options to choose from, app publishers can find exactly what they need!
Google Mobile Ads | Google Mobile Ads SDK helps app developers gain insights about their users, drive more in-app purchases, and maximize ad revenue. It’s important to note that it’s is now part of Firebase and the Google Mobile Ads SDK is delivered via Google Play services platform. It is no longer available as a standalone SDK.
AdMob | AdMob by Google is an easy way to monetize mobile apps with targeted, in-app advertising. You can use the mobile advertising platform to generate revenue from your app, gather usage data, explore new analytics capabilities, and more.
Facebook | Facebook’s SDK helps you build engaging social apps and get more installs. From driving in-app revenue through ads to understanding your customers’ actions in your app through App Events, this tool helps app publishers connect with people in a meaningful, intelligent way.
Wrapping it up
Product managers who work on the top iOS and Android apps use a variety of tools to help them accomplish their goals. Hopefully the list above gives you some new ideas of SDKs to check out!
For an even more comprehensive list of the what SDKs specific top apps use, including Starbucks and Uber, check out this post by Kevin Leong.