Demand for iPhone Developers Up Significantly – Make Your Mark Now!
By oDesk, a leading outsourcing marketplace for tech jobs, has announced that the demand for iPhone developers has skyrocketed by 500% in the six months since April 2008 – a six-times increase. Further, a job trends graph from job search site Indeed.com shows the number of iPhone related job postings going through the roof!
None of this should be surprising, however, given that the first beta version of the iPhone SDK was released on March 6, 2008 – roughly the point where the graph above starts to race upwards.
Still a Young Industry
Despite the increases, iPhone development is still a very young sector. Even with a large market of 13 million users, larger companies are being typically slow to get in on the action. Comparing the number of iPhone related development jobs to those for Rails developers (a semi-popular, but reasonably niche, Web application framework) shows how nascent the industry is:
Making Your Mark As a Developer – It’s a Bit Like The Rails Scene Was..
If you’re an iPhone developer who’s looking to be hired, don’t sell yourself short. While the number of jobs is still small, it’s going up all the time, despite the economic crisis. The iPhone has a large client market, but still a relatively small number of developers – so the interest should only continue to grow over the next several months.
As we saw in the Rails industry at a similar stage in its growth, this means that the few developers currently plugging away at building their identity and becoming “gurus” in the field will be able to command significantly-above-market rates now and into the future. If you want to make a mark (and some serious money!) in a new area, the iPhone development sector is the best place to do it right now – get blogging, get working, and start building up that personal brand for yourself.
Nice post. This seems to always happen with new technology. The trick is to explore, become really good – but keep your options open before it becomes commoditized.
Quick typo fix: “While the number of jobs is still quite smart, it’s going up all the time, despite the economic crisis.”
“smart” should be “small” I think. Though the jobs are smart.
Thanks, Topper. Good find 🙂
Interesting graph, but I’m curious to know the actual numbers underneath? Are we talking about tens, dozens, hundreds of positions? While an increase from .01 to .04 of all jobs makes for an interesting graphic, it doesn’t sound like a big number.
It’s hard to tell. For comparison, the same graph including “java” (one of the most popular terms):
https://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=iphone%2C+rails%2C+java&l=
iPhone and Rails do rank there, but they’re tiny compared to Java. Perhaps a few percent.
If I do a regular search on Indeed for “iphone” I get about 1000 results. For “Java” I get about 60000. So the scales seem reasonable. Those results are spread out over time though – I can’t establish what time range that is though. On further searching, most are certainly 1 month or younger, but there are many beyond that.
I completely agree. I am the Senior Sales Rep for the only mobile site dedicated to the mobile industry (https://www.mobijobs.com) and we have seen a dramatic rise in the number of postings and also candidates looking to get into the mobile space. So far it’s been recession-proof. Hope it stays that way.
Unlike Rails and PHP which are easy to learn, the iPhone SDK has a steep learning curve. Think 3 months of studying then another 3 months of actual coding experience to become adept. This will act as a gate so that there will never be a “flood” of new developers–maybe just wannabees w/o actual capacity to develop real-grade apps. The actual number of ‘real’ iPhone capable developers will be the right amount.
Check out https://www.phonefreelancer.com
Its a freelance website but specifically for the iphone, android, blackberry, and other smart phones. I’ve found a couple fun and lucrative projects on this website. Cheers.
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