Sign in / up

back to article 'App Economy' has created 466,000 US jobs

Although Apple may be facing mounting criticism for outsourcing its manufacturing beyond US shores, creating 700,000 jobs in China and elsewhere, one tech-industry advocacy group claims that Apple, the Android ecosystem, Facebook, and lesser lights account for roughly 466,000 US jobs in what it calls the "App Economy". " …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    0 in 2007?

    So I guess those hundreds of thousands of Java ME and Symbian apps that started about a decade or so earlier must have written themselves.

    And how many of these developers actually make money? I recently saw a statistic that said only 1% of IOS developers make more than $100,000/year. The rest had better be one man shops doing it for fun or they should plan on finding a new business soon.

    4 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Hundreds of thousands?

      LOL

      1 1
    2. jake Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Never mind Java stuff ...

      Remember the "shareware" scene of the 1980s? The comparison goes deep ... most so-called "apps" are about as useful as said shareware and Java is/was ...

      1 1
  2. Boyd Crow

    Another bogus buzzword

    This is another bogus buzzword like "ultrabook" (lower case). Software is software. The jobs may have moved to mobile but it is still programming with nothing particular new or "magic" about it.

    The whole concept of basing job estimates on want ads is very suspect. 1) the same job will be listed multiple places by hiring agencies and corporate subdivisions using different names 2) the same position may be advertised with more than one job description 3) there may be "exploratory" listings to see who or what price range is available and 4) there is a disreputable practice of holding "hiring interviews" to pick the brains of people who will not be hired. 5) they may simply be old ads that hiring agencies leave posted to give the impression of having many positions available.

    4 0
    1. tonysmith
      Reply Icon

      Oh dear

      I think I just went to one of those "hiring interviews" you speak of

      They asked me questions like 'how would you maintain the "stateful environment" within a web application' .

      I answer and I'm not sure if he scribbled it down or not.

      I agree with all the other points you made. With point 3 some recuritment agents, I'm sure, simply put out ads to collect candidate details...and usually offer you a job other than the one you applied for...which is usually not in tune with what you wanted.

      0 0
  3. Blarkon

    Probably rubbish

    Probably bollocks seeing that 99% of Apps publishes in the Apple App Store make less than $500 in revenue. It's like "YouTube" jobs where there are less than 20 people making more than 100K in revenue on YouTube.

    1 1
    1. ThomH
      Reply Icon

      However you have to allow for the apps that make a profit other than through the storefront. The obvious examples are those that exist to provide a more comfortable front-end to existing services (whether banking, Facebook or whatever), but there's also large chunks of the business world that are willing to put mobile development into the marketing budget, a high-end example being the Super 8 application that provided the fun distraction of video recording, processed lomo-style to look like footage shot on actual 8mm fine film many years earlier, in return for blatantly advertising the movie.

      It is, as you say, incredibly difficult to make an impact with an all-new brand through app stores alone.

      0 0
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Bollocks

      If we're talking numbers with no factual evidence I would say 99.9% or more of websites make way less than $500 in revenue. Doesn't stop many having jobs around making them.

      1 0
  4. Eddie Edwards

    Jobs created?

    What about jobs lost in other industry sectors as people quit their jobs to create apps? I don't know a single app programmer who didn't start out elsewhere in the industry. How many of these careers were created rather than repurposed?

    Hell of a lot more indies now though.

    0 0
  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    The SQL query economy! The MF3/BF3 economy! The War with Iran Pusher economy.

    Really, it just shows what people are doing at the moment and hopefully being paid for.

    0 0
  6. ZenCoder

    Apps not userful?

    Apps being useless wastes of time? the same was said about ...

    Websites

    Internet

    Cell Phones

    Personal Computers

    Computer Aided Design

    Held Held Calculators

    Punch cards

    Home Phones

    Today I Checked my bank account, paid my bills online, cashed a check by taking a picture of it, ordered a prescription refill, read my email, got an alert that my prescription, was ready, used a time tracker app to record the hours worked, and send a invoice to the client, used another app to identify a song I liked, quickly helped a friend by controlling their computer with team viewer, surfed the internet for a product manual, saved it in dropbox, then opened it for viewing in stanza. Read a programming manual in stanza. Checked the weather and tracked a 3 mile walk. Right now I'm on my iPad updating my grocery list which will then automatically sync with my iPod touch which I'll have with me at the store. Latter when I cook it will be open to the website with the recipe.

    2 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like