An interesting analysis of job creation by the "App Economy" has been conducted for TechNet by Dr.Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics LLC. This includes employment at pure App startups; large companies such as Electronic Arts, Amazon, AT&T, and Autodesk; App infrastructure jobs at Google, Apple, Facebook, RIM, and Microsoft, and spillovers to the rest of the economy.
As of December 12, 2011, the Apple App store lists 529,550 active apps, uploaded by 124,475 active publishers. Google's Android Market lists more than 300,000 apps. The App Economy generated almost $20 billion in revenue in 2011, including app downloads, in-app revenues, sales of virtual goods, and sales of physical goods and services.
A study of app-related jobs just on Facebook estimated the number of employees employed by third party developers to be 53,434. With the spillover to the rest of the economy, this suggests182,744 full time jobs.
The majior platforms in the App Economy are
• Android (Google)
• Apple iOS (Apple)
• Blackberry (RIM)
• Facebook
• Windows Phone and Windows Mobile (Microsoft)
The Technet analysis suggests that there were 155,000 tech jobs in the App Economy as of December 2011 including developer and tech support jobs at both dedicated app developers and at large companies who create apps for them or for others. This implies that there are roughly 311,000 jobs in App Economy firms, including tech jobs, which require app-related skills, and the corresponding non-tech jobs. With spillover included, the total number of jobs created in the App Economy is estimated at 466,000 jobs since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. A geographic breakdown suggests many of these were created in California
- California 23.8%
- New York 6.9%
- Washington 6.4%
- Texas 5.4%
- New Jersey 4.2%
- Illinois 4.0%
- Massachusetts 3.9%
- Georgia 3.7%
- Virginia 3.5%
- Florida 3.1%
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