SlashData - formerly VisionMobile Ltd

One category label, five very different customers.

Some are highly non-technical.
Some are mixed.
Others remain primarily developer-focused.

That distinction matters because a user on Wix Harmony, Lovable, Replit, Claude Code, or OpenAI Codex should not automatically be treated as the same type of customer.

For technology leaders, collapsing these audiences into one category can distort:
➡️ total addressable market estimates
➡️ product positioning
➡️ onboarding assumptions
➡️ pricing strategy
➡️ and governance requirements

The strategic question is not only:
How many people use AI software-building tools?

It is:
Which users are builders, what are they trying to create, and which part of the market should your organisation serve?

Explore the SlashData Builders Report:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6a312e565d94bb928ed881ff?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=builders_population_sizing_sep2026&utm_content=analyst_briefing_builder_population_september_post_05

Whether a team measures AI ROI changes how its own executives rate AI tools, by roughly three times.

In teams that do not measure AI ROI, 13% of engineering executives rate AI tools as not valuable.

Among teams that measure AI ROI, that falls to 4%.

Why this is important:
• Measurement helps leaders evaluate AI beyond isolated failures or recent frustrations.
• Without evidence, AI value is easier to doubt and harder to defend.
• Better measurement gives leaders a stronger basis for deciding what to scale, change, or stop.

Access the preview:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/69f85d2f1bce86275687b330?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=ai_roi_measurement_dei_preview_q12026&utm_content=september_post_02

The largest builder platforms sit at opposite ends of technical maturity.
SlashData classifies:
➡️ Wix Harmony as highly non-technical, with an estimated 76%–90% builder share
➡️ Lovable and Bolt.new as mostly non-technical, at 61%–75%
➡️ Replit as mixed, at 41%–60%
➡️ Developer-focused tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and BLACKBOX as highly technical, with only 10%–25% of users estimated to be builders.

The executive implication:
A large builder audience does not justify one generic builder experience.
Technology companies should adapt their approach by technical maturity: highly non-technical audiences need guided creation, templates, clearer safeguards, and outcome-led onboarding; mixed audiences need progressive complexity and flexible workflows; highly technical audiences need control, extensibility, integrations, and fewer constraints.

The solution is a tiered product and GTM model based on builder capability, not a single "no-code user" persona.

Access the report:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6a312e565d94bb928ed881ff?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=builders_population_sizing_sep2026&utm_content=analyst_briefing_builder_population_september_post_04

Private cloud and on-premise are not the same destination, and "cloud repatriation" is used for both.

SlashData's research finds that:

• 28% moved workloads or data from public cloud to private cloud
• 24% moved them from public cloud to on-premise infrastructure

The distinction matters.

Private cloud may preserve more cloud-like operating practices while increasing control. On-premise infrastructure may offer different ownership, compliance, latency, or cost characteristics, but it also brings different operational responsibilities.

For infrastructure leaders, the decision should not begin with "Should we leave public cloud?"

It should begin with:
• Which workloads are creating the problem?
• What degree of control is genuinely required?
• Which operating capabilities can the organisation support?
• Does the destination solve the underlying issue?

The solution is workload-level evidence, not architecture-level ideology.

Access the report preview:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6a5f93a5242d56211b539cf3?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=cloud_repatriation_sovereignty_sep2026&utm_content=september_post_3

SlashData Intelligence for Software Engineering Leaders is a new recurring research programme for CTOs, CPTOs, VPs and SVPs of Engineering.

The first release analysed responses from 2,341 professional developers in leadership positions in the 31st Developer Nation survey, and looked at how software teams measure the return on AI.

• 80% use AI-assisted tools
• 75% of those rate them valuable relative to cost and effort
• 88% say their organisation measures AI impact or ROI
• 39% of those measuring use recurring KPI tracking, dashboards or automated monitoring

The next wave looks at the future of developer teams: size, structure, seniority and governance.

Read the announcement:
https://www.slashdata.co/post/slashdata-intelligence-engineering-leaders?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=blog_slashdata_intelligence_engineering_leaders_20260914&utm_content=launch

Three infrastructure movements are running at once, and they point in different directions.

SlashData's latest research finds that, during the past 12 months:

• 48% of developers report their organisation moved services away from public cloud
• 46% moved towards hybrid infrastructure
• 35% moved towards public cloud

These findings are not contradictory. They show that organisations are making different placement decisions for different workloads.

For enterprise leaders, the implication is clear: a single cloud direction is no longer a sufficient strategy. Infrastructure decisions need to account for workload economics, data sensitivity, regulation, performance, and operational control.

For cloud and infrastructure vendors, the opportunity is not simply to win "cloud adoption". It is to prove where the platform belongs within a more distributed infrastructure portfolio.

Access the report preview:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6a5f93a5242d56211b539cf3?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=cloud_repatriation_sovereignty_sep2026&utm_content=september_post_2

Builder audiences are not spread evenly across AI creation platforms. Four hold the largest estimated active populations, on SlashData’s builder-population model:

Wix Harmony: 7.5M–8.9M builders
Replit: 6.8M–9.9M
Lovable: 4.9M–6M
Bolt.new: 2.7M–3.4M

These figures are estimates, not directly reported builder totals. SlashData standardised each platform’s usage figures, estimated the proportion of non-coding builders, and corrected the total market for multi-tool overlap.

For C-level teams, this provides a practical prioritisation lens.

Companies targeting builders should not distribute investment evenly across every AI creation platform. Start by identifying:

where the largest relevant audiences are concentrated;
which platforms align with your target builder segment;
where integrations or ecosystem partnerships could improve distribution;
and which channels offer credible access to active, not merely registered, users.

The solution is not broader coverage. It is evidence-led ecosystem prioritisation.

Explore the full builder-population methodology:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6a312e565d94bb928ed881ff?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=builders_population_sizing_sep2026&utm_content=analyst_briefing_builder_population_september_post_02

Regular smartphones are not going anywhere. But will foldables become the next major form factor? Apple has just placed its bet.

Back in Q1, we asked just under 3,000 mobile developers which form factors they expect to be most relevant in five years.

The majority (61%) think regular smartphones will continue to rule the landscape. Tablets take second place at 31%. Foldable phones rank fifth at 21%, slightly ahead of flip phones (16%), suggesting developers see more potential in the book-style fold (e.g. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold or the just-announced iPhone Duo) than in the clamshell.

In some regions, though, this is already starting to shift. In Greater China and East Asia, foldables outrank tablets as the second most expected form factor (35% vs 25% and 28% vs 24%, respectively). Foldables arrived earlier in these markets, and adoption has been far stronger.

Is the launch of the iPhone Duo the catalyst that turns this shift global?

If you want to go deeper into this and other data on how mobile developers are building beyond the smartphone, check:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6a297be73e365e92ff28b857?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=report_form_factors_beyond_smartphone_20260910&utm_content=foldables_iphone_duo

A single repatriation narrative does not survive contact with the data.

Cloud Repatriation and the Sovereignty Question, based on insights from more than 3,000 cloud developers, examines how organisations are moving workloads across public cloud, private cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments, and where sovereignty genuinely influences those decisions.

The findings challenge a simple repatriation narrative:
➡️ 48% report movement away from public cloud
➡️ 46% report movement towards hybrid infrastructure
➡️ 35% report movement towards public cloud

The clearest signal is not a universal shift away from hyperscalers.

It is a more selective, workload-level approach shaped by operational needs, organisation size, data sensitivity, and regulatory exposure.

For cloud providers, platform vendors, and enterprise technology leaders, the report provides a clearer view of where infrastructure strategies are heading, and where sovereignty should carry more weight.

Access the research preview:
https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6a5f93a5242d56211b539cf3?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=cloud_repatriation_sovereignty_sep2026&utm_content=september_post_1

79% of developers adding AI functionality to their applications use open models, more than the 71% using closed models. Only 51% of them reach production, against 63% for closed models.

SlashData and Mozilla surveyed 1,494 developers adding AI functionality to their applications in May 2026. The challenges developers name are deployment and scaling complexity, maintenance, and infrastructure cost. Model performance is among the least cited.

Read the analysis:
https://www.slashdata.co/post/open-models-production-gap?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=blog_open-models-production-gap_20260907&utm_content=launch