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The number of mobile application developers has now reached over 12 million according to figures by Evans Data, and it's being driven by the Android platform.
With mobile development skills becoming more invaluable than ever the number of developers has increased five-fold since Evans Data first began recording data back in 2006. In the first report, just two million developers focused on mobile.
Android remains the most popular of mobile platforms for application development
Over the past decade, the landscape has shifted dramatically towards mobile and driven many companies to adopt 'mobile-first' strategies. “Mobile development has really become ubiquitous,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data, in a statement.
“Mobile devices are everywhere, but while most modern applications support mobile devices, not all developers are working on the client target side. Some are server or back-end oriented or are concentrating more on the application logic or more and more on newer machine learning implementations, so watching the number of mobile developers move from just under two million 10 years ago to 12 million today just provides a reflection of the use of mobile devices today.”
The most recent Global Development Population and Demographics Study found more than half of the world's overall (including non-mobile) developer population of 21 million are now building mobile applications. Evans Data expects the number of mobile applications developers alone to reach over 14 million by 2020.
Android remains the most popular of mobile platforms for application development by a wide margin. 5.9 million of the developers said Android is their main platform, while 2.8 million responded iOS is their platform of choice.
There is some variation in preference of platform based on region. Within the Asia-Pacific region, Android is the platform of choice with 2.2 million developers targeting it compared to just 500,000 on iOS. In North America, iOS boasts around 200,000 developers more than Android.
As the fastest growing region, Evans recommends Apple makes a greater push for iOS development in the Asia-Pacific area.
What are your thoughts on this latest mobile developer study? Let us know in the comments.
