With India overtaking United States in usage and adoption of smartphones at 220 million active devices, the interest in learning development courses for mobile platform saw huge uptake in demand in India. In 2016, India overtook the United States to become the largest country in terms of interest in mobile developer courses. Search queries in mobile development courses from India saw 200% year on year growth in the last two years with Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra leading with bulk of queries from India.

Search interest in courses for mobile development also saw fast growth from Uttar Pradesh with search queries rising at 70% year on year and Bihar seeing query growth of 158% year on year. While India leads the world in terms of education related queries, demand for vocational training courses has been steadily rising comprising 40% of the total search volume growing at a healthy rate of 50% year on year.

While search interest in mobile development courses formed only 6% of overall IT related courses demand, the category is expected to grow rapidly as the Industry demand for quality mobile developers continues to rise. Simplilearn, one of the premium certification training providers saw 6x growth in the last one year with both students and professionals opting for mobile development and programming courses.

Commenting on the growth in job opportunities, Krishna Kumar, CEO of Simplilearn said, “With new age internet companies and startups creating exciting job opportunities for skilled mobile developers in India, we have witnessed a 3x increase in the number of individuals taking up certification training programs in the last 3 months. Over 65 % of our mobile developer learners in India comprise of college students and fresh graduates, compared to the US where 60 % of the learners are working professionals between the age bracket of 25 - 44.”

Speaking about the rising demand from India, Peter Lubbers, head of Google Developer Training said, “We have seen tremendous response across mobile developer courses from India, with  16,500 students enrolling every month taking up Android development, mobile web development and learning new cloud based technology courses. We have also introduced a globally-recognised, Job oriented Google Developer Certification (Associate Android Developer) that will help close the gap for employers and job seekers and define a common standard benchmark for the Industry.”

In addition to training partners like Simplilearn, Udacity, Edureka, Koenig, Manipal Global, and UpGrad are the key private players who offer mobile development courses in India. And starting in 2017, over 40 private and state technical universities will also offer the Android Fundamental course as part of standard curriculum.