Software developer population to reach 20 mn by 2015

SANTA CRUZ, USA: The number of software developers worldwide is expected to grow from 16 million today to over 20 million in 2015, according to Evans Data’s recently released Global Developer Population and Demographic Survey.

The survey report further added that, the hottest areas for growth are in India, China and Russia.

"We're seeing a strong growth wave in the developer population in Asia that will have some interesting impacts going forward," said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data Corp.

"For one, the developer population in Asia is much younger than in the U.S. By 2015, the 5.1 million developers under 30 today will increase to over 5.5 million. Similar growth will occur in new technology adoption such as mobile, cloud, HTML5, and agile development as these growing markets come of age," added Garvin.

The Global Developer Population and Demographic Study is now in its tenth edition, having been published twice a year since 2006. It calculates developer population and growth based on published job figures, plus statistics available from major world agencies and the governments of the top countries that are included.

Independent variables include country population, GDP, tertiary education, and other technical markers such as computers sold, mobile phones shipped, internet connections, etc. A proprietary formula derived from known developer stats is applied and growth rates achieved from linear regressions modified for real world events.

The study includes population estimates for regions as well as countries and regional technology adoption figures for topics of interest such as Cloud development, mobile development, platform, language and general technology adoption.