Alun Williams - Google+
Here's an interesting one on The Register - the (US) "App Economy" has created more than 450,000 jobs in the past four years, for developers, designers and marketeers toiling in the Smartphone mines...The source of the story is a report written for TechNet by by Dr. Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics, LLC.
Rik Myslewski writes:
"Nothing illustrates the job-creating power of innovation better than the App Economy," writes economist Michael Mandel in a report published on Tuesday by TechNet, a group self-described as "the preeminent bipartisan political network of CEOs and Seniors Executives that promotes the growth of technology-led innovation."
The report, "Where the Jobs Are: The App Economy", attempts to enumerate the jobs created by the "incredibly rapid rise of smartphones, tablets, and social media, and the applications - 'apps' - that run on them," a burgeoning industry that the report refers to as "perhaps the biggest economic and technological phenomenon today."How can the US dig itself out of the current job drought? is the question with which the report begins. The Executive Summary goes on:
This analysis--conducted for TechNet [...] shows that the App Economy now is responsible for roughly 466,000 jobs in the United States, up from zero in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced. This total includes jobs at 'pure' app firms such as Zynga, a San Francisco-based maker of Facebook game apps that went public in December 2011. App Economy employment also includes app-related jobs at large companies such as Electronic Arts, Amazon, and AT&T, as well as app 'infrastructure' jobs at core firms such as Google, Apple, and Facebook. In additional, the App Economy total includes employment spillovers to the rest of the economy.Among other things, the report considers the geographic spread of jobs in this smartphone-based economy.
"Judging by the location of want ads, the App Economy is widely distributed around the country. Table 3 shows the top 10 metro regions for distribution of App Economy jobs across metro areas, with the New York metro area accounting for 9.2% of the total, followed closely by San Francisco and San Jose metro areas."Read the report - Where the Jobs Are: The App Economy >>
Year Zero for the App Economy was 2007 (June 29), of course, with the launch of the Apple iPhone kicking it all off...
See also: Build You Own Android App
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