India to have more developers than US by 2018

With India becoming the third largest smartphone market in the world, how far behind can Indian developers be? Not far behind at all, as a new report by Evans Data Corporation says that the number of Indian developers will exceed the number of American ones by 2018.

The report says that globally the total number of developers is expected to increase to 26.4 million by 2019. That’s a whopping 45 percent increase from the current figure of 18.2 million developers, according to Evans. The US with 3.6 million developers is the current leader in the world, but India, which has an estimated 2.75 million programmers and coders, is projected to add a further 90 percent to that number by 2018. The final tally five years from now is expected to be 5.2 million developers in India, compared with the US’ 4.5 million.

India’s developer community all set to grow (Image credit: Getty Images)

With the recent change in US immigration laws and H-1B Visa norms, it’s going to become less and less cost-effective for American companies to hire skilled Indian workers or bring Indian coders to American shores for on-site work for an outsourced project. This move will likely result in more Indian developers and programmers setting up shop within India in the nest few years.

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India is a key market for smartphone vendors considering the size of those still not on the Internet bandwagon. Google has already signalled its intentions for the smartphone market in India with the announcement of Android Nation stores. Apple is also seriously looking at the untapped market and the much-rumoured low-cost iPhone will be part of the company’s plans for India. With such names backing the growth of the Indian market, it only make sense that more developers also emerge.