What is the development of your career?

What is Mobile Application Development career outlook like in 2013 and the future?

• I'm a .net backend guy thinking of moving to the hot mobile development world. I have skills in javascript, jquery and some HTML5, CSS3 as well as basic objective-c. Before I'm fully committed myself to the new venture, I'd like to know if mobile development career (wrapped html5 webapp, native ios apps) is still hot and what the future holds for mobile development career?

• Answer:

  2 schools of thought in this one: Pros: Developing for mobile today is still extremely difficult (multiple platforms, varying standards, back end integrations, etc). Developer talent is still hard to come by and is commanding premium salaries. To top it off mobile is still a nascent market - nobody has really figured out how to effectively monetize the small screen, and mobile adoption in emerging markets is skyrocketing. Also, given your background you will probably find the transition fairly easy (outside of the learning curve of everyone's SDK). Also consider what industry you are most interested in (gaming, social, enterprise, etc) - some areas have more opportunity and require much different skill sets than others. Cons: If everyone adopts HTML5 and leverages all of these BaaS (backend as a service) offerings developing for mobile may become more commoditized. Building a Multi-platform app gets easier everyday and in general the product requirements tend to be simpler than what you are probably used to building software with .net. Imagine a world where there is a drag and drop interface to create an app and it submits to all the app stores (we aren't that far from this for certain types of apps). I'm generally bullish on this career as I see the struggles my peers go through in hiring. I'd say go for it, it never ever hurts to learn a new technology!