Native App Developers Surfaces as Mobile Maturity Shifts Market
Senior iOS developers are suddenly easier to find as the mobile market reaches maturity and cross-platform tools gain significant traction. Despite the rise of alternatives like React Native, native development still holds value for specialized business needs.
Senior iOS developers are surprisingly easy to find this year compared to previous years when they were incredibly rare. This shift occurs as the US mobile market reaches maturity, with App Annie reporting that app downloads increase only 5 percent from 2016 to 2018 while app store revenue jumps 70 percent in the same period. The total number of apps in the iOS App Store also remains essentially flat over the last two years.
Cross-platform development tools drive this change by offering viable alternatives to traditional native app building. React Native usage nearly doubles in the last year, with Microsoft updating 38 of its apps including Word and Excel to use the framework. Progressive web apps also experience slow but distinct growth, giving companies more options beyond dedicated native applications.
Native development is not dying, as modern tools like Swift and Kotlin make the process significantly better than older languages. A long tail of new app development continues to grow for very specific business needs rather than mass consumer audiences. The market simply evolves from a universal native-only approach to a more diverse ecosystem where developers choose the best tool for each specific project.