Mobile application developers are a rare breed to find in India but there’s a huge demand for them throughout the world and in India. If you’re a programmer and are thinking of starting out or studying a bit to be a mobile app developer, now is the perfect time. If you’re pretty much tuned into industry trends you’ll know that mobile app explosion is no news but in India, mobile apps have finally made it into main stream. You don’t need any report to tell you if you look at the bill board ads, and ads on TV you’ll see that all the major mobile phone brands are pushing the social media features.
Graphic by Matt Hamm used under CC BY-NC 2.0
Getting into Orkut, Facebook, and being able to Tweet is becoming more and more important — especially to the young middle class who have enough spending power and disposable income to play around with. Just a month ago on Alexa, Orkut was #4, and Facebook #5 of the sites people visit in India. I wrote a bit about that on my personal blog. But this month, Yahoo moved up to the #3 position, Facebook to #4 and Orkut dropped to #5. That just shows you how fast things can change even in India. You have to remember though that Yahoo has been totally aggressive in their ad spending on billboards and on TV.
Joji Thomas Philip of Economic Times reported today that Chennai has 143% mobile penetration, that’s 1.43 mobile connections per person — this figure doesn’t even include the land line. There are more mobile phones than people in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. People in these metro cities are also willing to try new things at all times. Even with more and more telecom networks entering the market, folks in the industry are optimistic. That means mobile usage and application usage is going to grow. Metro cities in India have enough population density to both start and sustain trends. Combined with a thirst for brands and to be “in the know”, these cities are perfect places for viral campaigns. That means people will be wanting more mobile apps so there’s a definite need for mobile app developers. If you’re a content developer start thinking of developing viral content not just in English, but in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Urdu, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu… you get the picture.
The pessimist in you might say, “I can’t do anything in the Indian market”, but the skills you gain as a mobile application developer will be able to cater to the world market as well, just check out Mary Meeker’s presentation on the future of Web 2.0.
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