Partly, it’s the AI train. But there’s more.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

As a long-time mobile developer, I am eager to know the latest trends in Apple, Android, and cross-platform ecosystems. However, the recent signals from the industry are not very exciting.

This post isn’t about what got shoved down developers’ throats in the latest WWDC or Google I/O. It’s about how the ongoing trends affect developers’ careers.

Mobile developer jobs are vanishing fast — at least that’s what I see from my LinkedIn search. There is also an interesting Reddit thread regarding it, supported by StackOverflow developer survey developer count stats: The number of mobile dev survey respondents went from 12.45% to 3.38%.

While the results of an industry-leading forum cannot be considered reflective enough, collective feedback in online + offline forums is too sizable to ignore.

How we ended up here:

Just less than a decade ago, mobile development was the coolest technology. Every leading tech company was trying to conquer both the platforms: iOS and Android.

For almost half a decade, the battle kept raging between native and cross-platform. Before that, Cordova, Xamarin, and Titanium were the buzzwords on every tech manager’s lips…