The mobile app market is not only booming, but one of the fastest growing in the last five years. Without going any further, the use of mobile applications grew in 2015 by 58% more compared to the previous year. The sectors that experienced the most growth were personalization applications, with a growth of 332%, followed by news and magazine applications with 135% of growth and productivity applications such as Quip or Slack, with a growth of 125%.
Although it is a mature sector, it continues to evolve and more and more people decide to make application development their profession. But, what kind of profile is hidden behind an application developer like WhatsApp or Instagram?
The company of Inmobi has carried out an interesting study in which we can get an idea of the profile that stands behind app development experts. The typical developer is between the ages of 31 and 35 years old, has less than 3 years of experience and an average monthly salary of about 6000 dollars. But two of the most striking points of this study are that, only 6% of the 1089 interviewed developers were women and that only 16 % of them had more than 5 years of experience in the sector. Of course, nine out of ten interviewees did not want to reveal their gender.That the experience is so low is simply due to the fact that there are many people who come from sister sectors such as computer science or graphic design, and who, seeing a niche professional development opportunity in application development, decideredirect your career to this sector.
According to the study, the global average age of developers is 31 years old, except in the United States where the average age is rising up to 35 years. This study also reveals that 47% of developers prefer to work on their own versus 33% who choose teamwork.
Another interesting point is what is the biggest motivation of developers when choosing their profession and, as expected, won the money35% of those interviewed responded that what motivates them most about their job is the salary, followed with 17% by "fun at work" and "creative opportunity" with 16%. 14% said that the economic stability of the application market is what attracted them the most and only 6% referred to the "lifestyle".
Unfortunately, for a community with such significant human and intellectual potential, the benefits are really low 55% of developers they earn less than 1000 dollars a month while there is a small percentage that multiplies this monthly amount considerably. If you are a developer you will be able to earn much more money in countries like the United States or France while in Asia or Australia is where the sector is worst paid. Regarding the type of applications in development games are in the lead with 41%, which is not surprising considering the number of games available in Google Play or App Store.
