The Planet of the Apps: Rise of Mobile Development

The article ‘Free iPhone’s Would Yield Rich Returns’ demonstrates the importance of Apples App Store to their success, so much so that if Apple were to ‘sell’ their phones for free, access to the device and its embedded apps would become even further widespread than it is now. This would increase demand for the phone, usage of Safari, iTunes, iCloud etc, and make Apple customers buy more Apple products.

It’s not just Apple – Samsung, Motorola and Blackberry can all thank their success to their operating systems and development of mobile apps. Content creates loyalty, this isn’t news. Phone companies are well aware of this and mobile app development is undeniably booming. It is projected that the end of this year will see 102 billion mobile apps downloaded globally, with this number reaching 268 billion in 3 years time.

This huge number doesn’t come as much of surprise given the number of times you have probably heard the words ‘there’s an app for that!’ during conversations with friends. I’ve only just downloaded the British Airways app onto my Smartphone for a trip to London last week. It’s amazing that you can download your boarding pass and use that to scan yourself through check in, security and straight onto your flight.

The point is apps are renowned for being useful, entertaining and for making our lives easier via our Smartphones and tablets. It is safe to say that as a consumer you almost always expect any given company to have developed a mobile app to make them more accessible to you. And are surprised and (slightly) disappointed if there hasn’t been one developed yet. Statistics show that 84% of us look at our Smartphone’s first thing in the morning. What we’re looking at is most likely to be a weather app to decide what to wear that day, an app to check our social media updates, or simply an app to read the days headlines.

So are we suprised that demand for mobile app developers is increasing rapidly? This demand is mirroring the demand for web developers when the internet first became big business and everybody wanted a website. Now everybody wants apps. Demand for mobile developers has doubled in the past 2 years but given this much talked about war for talent; there is a grave shortage of talent to fulfil this demand.

Author: Enigma