We’ve seen quite a metamorphosis in the world of software development over the past couple of years. It wasn’t all that long ago when developers were faced with a four basic career choices:

• Work as a code scribe for a monolithic software empire — go big.
• Create vertical solutions for an independent software vendor — go deep.
• Build a stealth product for a dinky little startup — go small.
• Run as an independent consultant — go alone.

OK, so I might be a little reductive in my argument, but you get the point. As a professional developer, you could choose to be part of a team (small, medium, large) or you could fight for scarce contract work in the big, bad world as a consultant. Finding a market for your own solutions was a bit like finding the next Fred Astaire on America’s Got Talent — always possible, but not likely.

Everything changed with the advent of the application marketplace, however. A vast ecosystem of apps has grown up around the mobile devices that we cling to in almost every conceivable location and situation — once off limits restaurants, golf clubs, and even restrooms (sadly, yes) are filled with the pings of text messages and full scale phone conversations today.

But good things have come from this ubiquity of mobile devices too. Software companies and individual developers responded to our ‘always on’ web experience with an overwhelming torrent of both niche and general business applications, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Clearly Apple has been at the epicenter of this movement with 100,000+ applications released to the App Store (as of early 2010). Taking a conservative number, Google’s mobile platform accumulated 38,000+ Android apps in a much shorter space of time.

New devices only add fuel to this app inferno — I read today that Apple’s iPad has just sold over 1 million units, with 12 million apps downloaded, in less than a calendar month, opening up a whole new category of touch screen apps that didn’t exist 12 months ago.

The volume of new applications is not limited to consumer devices and trivial apps, mind you. Enterprise application marketplaces are also thriving — Salesforce.com leads the way with 890+ AppExchange apps and a huge combined user base.

I’ve written in the past about how we use VerticalResponse within the AppExchange suite to manage our email communications at InnerWorkings. The hosted app is so seamlessly integrated with Salesforce.com that we’ve barely glanced at their standalone product.

The list of application marketplaces continues to grow elsewhere too — with the likes of Google Apps and Zoho offering a virtual buffet of productivity and collaboration apps to a hungry world of business users.

Twitter and Facebook continue to offer a massive audience for all kinds of applications that play by the rules of their underlying platform and APIs. Some of these apps will break out of their niche status and become self-sustaining, profitable entities that will make their owners wealthy and their users very happy. Others will be cannibalized by the natural expansion of the underlying platform and disappear without a trace.

In any case, this is a brave new world for application developers. I think it’s still true to say that great ideas with careful execution are the best recipe for success, but the emergence of these massive application marketplaces puts the world at a developer’s feet. Go forth. Multiply. Be careful. And don’t use your phone in the restroom.

Add this post to: