India Ranks Second in App Development, US Third

In the recent times, more and more users from India are taking interest in mobile app development. Since 2014, online search inquiries for courses in mobile app development has increased by over 200% surpassing US- which is apparently the largest community for app development. This is clearly suggestive of the fact that India is completely poised to see a rapid growth in the developer’s community.

Owing to such potential, Google and Apple have started paying attention to the Indian Developers Community, including both indie developers and app development companies.

In a local community, building an app ecosystem requires a pool of developers that create localized apps that appeal to local consumers. To build this ecosystem and have developers on board, it requires to create incubation hubs and development centers that teach app development.

The Sterile Indian Landscape

July 2016: Google launched Android Skilling, a program aimed at training about 2 million developers on android development available for free at the NSDC training institutes.

May 2016:  Apple announced plans to open up an iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in Bengaluru to provide additional guidance and support to domestic developers.

Why the App Developer Community is growing?

  1. Explosive Smartphone Growth

According to Counterpoint Research, in February 2016, India surpassed the United States to become the second largest user of smartphones with a userbase of about 220 million! Strangely, this accounts for only 22% of the total 980 million users of mobile phones in the country. This is a clear epiphany of the buffering potential of growth that still withstands the economy.

  1. Substantial growth in App downloads:

With the increase in the number of mobile users, there is a significant rise in the number of downloads as well. While the world is going digital, App Annie’s survey report on the rise of mobile retail in India, the number of apps downloaded reached about 8 billion in 2016. This is a 92% increase since 2014. Further projections also state that this is yet to scale at the annualized rate of 26% through 2020 resulting in about 20 billion downloads.

  1. Increased and increasing app demand:

According to Caesar Sengupta, VP of Product Management at Google; the Indian Developers Community will reach 4 million by 2018- the largest in the world. Since the demand for apps is increasing, so will the number of developers.

While individual business attempt to hire app developers from the wide and growing pool, there are few mistakes you should never make.

However, as lucrative and equitable it may look, there is a high risk of overcrowding causing app developers to vie for attention to their niche in the noisy market. Being discovered in such a dynamic and competitive market is difficult and therefore marketing costs are skyrocketing.

According to reports from Comscore, consumers spend three-quarters of their total mobile usage time on their three top favorite apps.

However, new tools are available now to engage and re-engage consumers; along with new products and solutions coming to the market with the sole purpose of alleviating the issues of app engagement.

For a developing country like India, this statistical preview poses this as a big leap and appears fairly promising.

Read Jessica Smith’s (Research Analyst at Business Insider) complete report on App Engagement here.

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