Future Big Opportunities for (Mobile) Apps Developers

Programmer and apps developer are the sexy professions of the year, famous for being jobs that pay well. These kinds of profession will continue trending up to the near future given that mobile ecosystem is still in its early development and will keep growing with as internet penetration and smartphone adoption soar. The issue was brought up at the Mobile Developer Day 2016 workshop, organized by iTrain Asia in cooperation with the Indonesian Association for Telematics Software (ASPILUKI), Creative Economy Agency (BeKraf), Inixindo, and Binus International, on Tuesday (15/3).

“The Asian region is going into a rapid growth of mobile ecosystem. In the midst of the rapid progress, mobile application is one of the key drivers in mobile device usage,” stated Bikesh Lakhmichand, iTrain Asia CEO at the Mobile Developer Day 2016 opening in Binus’ FX Sudirman Campus, Tuesday (15/3). It’s fair to say that the future of digital realm lies in mobility wherein mobile devices (smartphone, wearable device, and so on) will ever increasingly grow. This is indicated by several factors, for instance level of internet and mobile penetration, media consuming behaviour, and so on.

Quoting the data that Bikesh presented, Southeast Asia is a region with the highest average rate of mobile penetration amounting to 119%, compared to the global average rate of mobile penetration amounting to 98% and China 95%. It is similar with the growth of smartphone market, wherein Asia Pacific comes out as the region with the largest smartphone market with the fastest growth in the world. Based on 2015’s data, the total of smartphone shipment across the Asia Pacific region reached approximately 800 million, while in other areas it was still below 750 million smartphones.

More specifically, mobile usage has soared in Asia Pacific wherein users spent 2.5 hours in average per day using their smartphones. However, Bikesh conveyed that mobile web usage declined sharply, being in inverse to apps usage on smartphone. “Smartphone users spend only 14% of their time using smartphone while the remaining time is spent on applications,” revealed Bikesh.

According to Bikesh, there are currently 9 million app developers throughout the world wherein the number increases by approximately 800 thousand new app developers per year. “A hundred billion apps were downloaded and approximately 25 billion dollars were paid for various applications,” said Bikesh. Not only smartphone applications, developers have also started developing applications for smart watches, other wearable devices, for cars, as well as smart home applications. Therefore, the potential for application development is enormous and more application developer forces are needed.

The issue was discussed by Ikin Wirawan too, entreprise software solution provider Walden Global Services (WGS) Founder and CEO, stating that the demand for apps developer is very high today, from both within and outside the country. Because the demand is high, while the workforce supply is still insufficient, the job is very well-paid.

“Imagine, a vocational school graduates with IT training and has worked only several months can get Rp7-8 million pay,” said Wirawan Ikin whose company also provides IT training services for everyone, both paid and free on terms and conditions. In his opinion, nowadays and in future, someone must not only have literacy skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also coding. “Because coding has become a language skills you will need in the future,” revealed Ikin.

Apart from that, Mobile Developer Day also invited Google Play & Apps- Google Business Development Manager, David Yin; Admob & Google Analytics-Google Strategic Partner Manager, Inge Wong; IceHouse VP Engineering, Pria Purnama. David Yin and Inge Wong revealed how to make applications that are successfully accepted in the market, particularly using Google platform. Meanwhile, IceHouse’s Pria Purnama talked about IceHouse’s culture that promotes freedom in apps innovation and development.