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High Demand for Mobile App Development

By October 24th, 2011 at 3:06 pm

Categories: Employment Trends, IT Industry, SW/Web Development

Recently mobile app analytics firm, Flurry, released a report finding the average person in the US spends 9% more time on mobile apps than browsing the web. “In June [2011] users spent an average of 81 minutes daily on mobile apps, compared to 74 minutes on the web,” and users aren’t just playing games and social networking, they are getting directions, reading the news, watching TV and movies, shopping, banking and, even, working. So it’s no surprise mobile apps are now a must have for just about every company out there. Without mobile access to a company’s information and product, they are not reaching a huge percentage of their customers.

So, it’s no wonder that more and more companies are dedicating significant time, budget and resources to hiring IT professionals with specific skill sets in iOS, Android and Windows mobile development. A 2011 report from tech job board giant, Dice, stated that jobs in the mobile app development space are among their fastest growing hiring requests. Despite this growing need, however, less than one-in-five (17%) of technology professionals have published a mobile app, with only a quarter doing mobile app development full time.

Hudson IT has seen this explosive demand across the nation and has been faced with the challenge of finding the few tech engineers who have made the transition into the mobile app elite. Yet, Hudson has found that just publishing your own app isn’t always enough. Employers also want to make sure that engineers understand the entire mobile app development life cycle. Companies are building out entire teams to plan, build, test and deploy these apps, just as with any other software. The most valuable mobile developers will be the ones who worked as part of a larger team building successful applications. This is the biggest challenge we have as recruiters, finding talent in the mobile space with a record of working in a team environment.

For the IT professionals out there who are interested in adding this skill, it can be a game changer. Not only does it broaden their existing skill set and give them access to more jobs, it also pays as well. According to Dice, a third of developers who have published an iOS app that have made a dollar or more are making significantly higher incomes over all.

So how do you get one of these many great jobs? Go ahead and start developing, even if it is on your own, because employers want to see that you have done it before. Good Web developers with strong backgrounds in Objective C (for iOS) and Java and C++ (for Android and Windows) tend to have an easy transition into the mobile development world. Having a published app is obviously a big selling point, but having a strong background making applications alone can make you significantly more marketable.

Have you made the leap into mobile app development? How are you building your experience. Let us know in the comments.

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3 Comments »

  1. Good read.mobile applications based on IOS and Android are in great demand. Businesses are finding ways to reach their audience via a mobile application.
    Of course it is very important to have an efficient mobile application which calls for due care and proper testing before launching.

    Comment by android apps development — November 29, 2012 @ 7:46 am

  2. iPhone and android both applications are in demand. in various field mobile apps are play vital role.thanks for this nice post.

    Comment by Mobile Application Development — April 30, 2013 @ 6:30 am

  3. I’m really enjoying the theme/design of your blog. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility issues? A number of my blog readers have complained about my site not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Firefox. Do you have any recommendations to help fix this problem?

    Comment by Amee — May 23, 2013 @ 6:48 am

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