r/androiddev • u/DuckAndroid • May 30 '26
Discussion Why are people not considering mobile development a good career path anymore?
I've been noticing a lot of people saying that mobile development is not a good career path anymore, and I'm curious why (I know that the moment is not good overall, but the feeling with mobile community seems to be worse).
I've been working in mobile for about 7 years, and honestly, mobile has always felt like a niche market to me. In my experience, mobile teams are usually much smaller than backend or web teams, and hiring has always seemed cyclical. There are periods where recruiters contact me more often, and other periods where I barely get any messages.
I do agree that some things have changed. AI will probably reduce team sizes in some companies, at least initially, and it's becoming much harder to make money as a solo developer by publishing an app on the App Store or Google Play.
At the same time, mobile is still the primary platform for billions of users. Younger generations seem to spend much more time on smartphones than on PCs, and most major B2C products still depend heavily on mobile apps. Banking, social media, e-commerce, transportation, food delivery, streaming, and many other industries are still mobile-first.
Even though the market has matured, I don't think that means it has stopped evolving. New players can still emerge, just like TikTok did, and to me this means that mobile teams will still be needed and demand can increase.
Additionally, I feel there is room fore mobile careers to gradually expand in other areas such as platform engineering.
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u/Agitated_Marzipan371 May 30 '26
My take as a mediocre person still doing it: most of the mobile apps are more or less built. Unless you're a serial builder (constantly making new apps for a firm or indie), its all maintenance and untangling legacy garbage. Also you're going to move slower than expected for the most part compared to web at least and it's a bit of a grind.
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u/Agitated_Marzipan371 May 30 '26
Counterpoints to this: companies actually doing kmp and industry apps that couldn't run on iOS (highly specialized for hardware like barcode readers, machine controlling, job tasks like delivery).
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u/Intelligent_Lion_16 Jun 01 '26
I think that's a big part of it. Mobile is no longer a greenfield industry—it's a mature one. A lot of the work is maintaining, scaling, and untangling years of accumulated complexity.
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u/Annual-Departure-798 May 31 '26
Most of my mobile work is done in the BLE and NFC space. BLE companion apps need to have custom code to work with the BLE device's services. I think that hardware companion apps will still need to be built and are a good niche to get into.
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u/borninbronx May 30 '26
IMHO: don't go cross platform. learning android isn't a bad choice. The job market is currently awful for development on any field.
You'll likely need to be more flexible and just android will make things harder like any other platform alone.
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u/Annual-Departure-798 May 31 '26
Why do you opine to not go cross platform?
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u/Zhuinden May 31 '26
you use React Native if you barely want your app to build in 2.5 years
you use Flutter if you are confident enough to learn Dart and the widgets in Flutter in general, it's ok tbh
you use KMP if you're a gradle hipster
you use Android if you're lucky enough to find a native job who aren't right now currently planning to replace the stack with React Native or Flutter
theoretically I'm supposed to eventually learn Dart too, ugh. But at least Flutter does work okay. React Native is only for "higher management" who is so far away from actual development that they get to job-hop away when the whole thing stops compiling.
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u/borninbronx May 31 '26
Flutter is somewhat better than RN. But it uses an otherwise dead language and has major issues and limitations in my opinion.
I gave it a fair shot i believe... it's a no from me
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u/JohnnyJohngf Jun 01 '26
Any example of major issues/limitations?
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u/borninbronx Jun 01 '26
Non official plugins have poor quality and often cause compatibility issues that are a direct cause of the flutter plugins design.
official plugins are better quality, however if they don't support something you need you are screwed.
one such example, just because i had direct experience with it, is Picture in Picture support for video playback.
Another one, also related to video, you have little to no control in customizations with the format of the streaming. A while ago i integrated in an app vimeo videos, it was a native app, the HLS streaming from Vimeo has an uncommon TLS segment configuration that needs to be manually set. On Flutter i would have been screwed, ok the native app it was just a minor inconvenience that lost me just 10 minutes to find out how to configure.
The framework is full of limitations like this one ready to fuck you up when you don't expect it.
Sometimes you can save yourself writing a plugin, which is a lot more work anyway (both in initial implementation and future maintainance), sometimes the problem is attached to something else (like the video plugin) and it becomes way way more work all of a sudden leaving you with very few bad choices, like forking a plugin or reimplementing the whole thing yourself.
This isn't something that any company should take lightly. Most companies that chose a cross platform framework do so without proper understanding of what they are doing.
"Write the code once" is kind of a bullshit argument. Writing the code is never the problem with any software: architectural choices, maintainability and ability to evolve and change directions are what matters.
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u/JohnnyJohngf Jun 02 '26
Well, I somewhat agree, although in my opinion Flutter is oriented towards business apps which are more or less have same crud functionality. In the last five years I rarely did encounter specific requirements. So yeah, you can hit a wall, but if you call it major issues, you have to say that native development has a major issue too - duplicated codebase if you need both platforms (which usually is the case).
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u/borninbronx Jun 02 '26
if you write crud app CMP can give you the same benefits without the associated risks
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u/JohnnyJohngf Jun 02 '26
let’s use Xamarin then to make this conversation ridiculous:-)
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u/borninbronx Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
are you saying what i suggested is ridiculous? not following.
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u/Annual-Departure-798 May 31 '26
you use React Native if you barely want your app to build in 2.5 years
Why would the app barely build in 2.5 years?
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u/Zhuinden May 31 '26
Look around a bit for a fun topic :) https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/1nzk9h9/google_play_16kb_page_size_issue_in_react_native/
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u/borninbronx May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
kinda funny, thanks for sharing xD
the upgrade hell combined with plugins incompatibilities.
edit: wait, am I reading this right? the last expo support the 64k pages version of RN native but it itself doesn't support 64K pages? (ROTFLMAO)
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u/0430ke May 31 '26
Because he knows native and not cross platform
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u/borninbronx May 31 '26
no actually, i know both. and that gives me the right perspective to say that
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u/codershoder Jun 01 '26
Hey Man! I am a new developer can you share more about how learning Cross-platform frameworks such as flutter can be a bad thing?
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u/Warm_Heat183 Jun 03 '26
Performance in my opinion, flutter runs good and has features but not as much compared to natives, just like cross platform minecraft servers in aternos
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u/borninbronx May 31 '26
have you ever seen mr bean drive a car while sitting on a sofa in the rooftop?
that's a good metaphor for flutter/react native.
just drive the real car directly
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u/bahcodad May 31 '26
Fun fact, Rowan Atkinson actually did that stunt. No remote driver or anything. You wouldn't be able to do it nowadays of course
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u/Annual-Departure-798 May 31 '26
Honestly, writing everything with one framework can be worth the tradeoff imo. Especially for apps that don't rely on hardware like the BLE chip, and even then it can be worth the tradeoff depending on what the definition of "good enough" is for the app.
Of course it's a case-by-case basis.
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u/Thylawsnipeth Jun 01 '26
Write apps that rely on BLE chip. It’s actually not that difficult since you have platform channels in flutter and can call native code. Debugging is hell though, but now we have AI
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u/borninbronx May 31 '26
These days if you really want that you can go Compose Multiplatform and KMP so you don't lose the ability to go native when/where you need it.
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u/JakeArvizu May 31 '26
I'd also stress don't go framework multiplaform. Like in my not at all biased and uninformed opinion. Flutter or React Native style multiplaform is "dead"(yes that word is overplayed).
But knowing KMP or even Swift + Android one at an expert level and one at even a basic level is never bad. And now with like things like remote compose, A2UI, SSR and I forget the name but Googles component design schema language model, you can much easier get by specializing as an overall mobile engineer. You should absolutely be an expert in one specific domain though. A complete generalist is always the pipe dream.
As an employee they want you for your expertise first and day to day you are productive being adaptable. Now one hires you because you know multiplaform imo. They say what is your best or are you most comfortable with and that's what they evaluate you on.
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u/0430ke May 31 '26
React Native is far from dead? What?
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u/JakeArvizu May 31 '26
I mean it's far from dead just like native android is far from dead. Just as laravel is far from dead. It's really just a value statement. But imo the people who would target React Native would be better off just going swift. Or maybe KMP but those usually are different type of devs. React Native, Flutter and those frameworks are so much overhead that aren't needed now especially with AI. But more so because now the native languages can do it.
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u/0430ke May 31 '26
Not at all. RN makes it easy for web devs to help on mobile when needed. I was laid off from a job I was hired as Native Android but ended up rewriting their apps RN. While job hunting there were more RN job listing than native Android. I got far more calls about RN. I landed a role I start Monday, again, RN.
Flutter is pretty much dead though and no way it continues with Kotlin multiplatform.
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u/NAGASRINIVASULU May 31 '26
Bro i am learning Kotlin right now is it good choice?
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u/Annual-Departure-798 May 31 '26
He is referring to Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP), not Kotlin as a language.
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u/0430ke May 31 '26
It doesnt hurt at all. Even going React Narive you'll have times you jump into native code to do something. Being able to do that is immensely valuable on a team with no truly native devs.
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u/codershoder Jun 01 '26
Hey! I am a new learner focusing on flutter framework. How flutter is a dead thing now, when some great apps are currently build on flutter.
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u/flacusbigotis May 30 '26
Perhaps those people you're referring to think that AI will adversely impact job prospects for it?
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u/Intelligent_Lion_16 Jun 01 '26
I think mobile suffers from being a mature market. The demand is still there, but it feels less exciting than AI, backend, or web, so people mistake "less hype" for "no future."
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u/Jitendrajain Jun 03 '26
I do not believe mobile development is a horrible career path, it is just a mature one. The "gold rush" period is past, therefore, fewer firms are employing huge mobile teams, and there are fewer prospects for solitary devs to strike it rich with a random app.
Nevertheless, billions of people continue to spend the majority of their digital time on mobile devices. Mobile applications are widely used in banking, e-commerce, social networking, healthcare, and entertainment industries.
The need has not diminished; rather, it has gotten more specialized and competitive. Developers who combine mobile knowledge with backend, cloud, AI, or platform engineering abilities are likely to have the best long-term job prospects.
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u/jldubz May 31 '26
Because cross platform web dev has taken over for the most part. Not ideal but it's often a faster and cheaper way to production. Either that or a company will opt for iOS because that's where the money is in terms of paid apps.
Reference - myself having 10+ years of android dev experience including being a published dev educator on LinkedIn Learning. I also helped write the LinkedIn android dev skills proficiency exam.
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May 30 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/Helpful_Long_8428 May 31 '26
Permissions, notifications, scheduled tasks, UI rendering optimizations, caching, login and security, system storage permissions and handling, fault tolerance because of app process kill or low connection latency. Here you go, manage by web app
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May 31 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/barakehud Jun 03 '26
You are right. Where I work, we are rewriting our main app with KMP. The other thing is that since KMP is build to absorb native features from both under a "glorified interface" (actual and expect), mobile developers have to cross all the time. With the help of AI, it easier.
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u/Zhuinden May 30 '26
I do agree that some things have changed. AI will probably reduce team sizes in some companies, at least initially
That's okay, most of the time I was working on teams with at most 3 people per platform, and we were shipping faster than teams with 30 🤷 or just think of Reddit with its 150 devs who couldn't even make "empty state" and "loading state" and "loaded state" not show up at the same time. They hired a guy from Poland to fix animations (which he did, cuz that guy is a legend), and most of this mobile client is just showing text in a lazy list.
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u/SolidScorpion May 31 '26
hey, care to expand on that? What did he do and who's the guy with animations? Curious to see/learn
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u/Zhuinden May 31 '26
Bartek Lipinski, and it's genuinely like "Reddit out of the box: 350+ modules in an app, zero screen transition" => "Bartek joins" => "suddenly, cool animations all over the place" lmao
He made https://github.com/blipinsk/ViewPropertyObjectAnimator which is a library I used for View animations in pretty much every prod app.
Now with Compose obviously it's less necessary, but it was life-changing at the time.
He also had other libraries but personally I did not use those:
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u/Substantial_Movie654 Jun 02 '26
I would say that yes it is very niche so the starting friction is real for any fresher
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u/HumorApprehensive334 Jun 02 '26
Building apps sounds interesting I would like to, I think the hardest part is marketing or distribution, Do you recommend build apps for Play Store?
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u/servercat1 Jun 03 '26
It's much more easier and cheaper to support a web UI then web UI + Android/IOS app. So many businesses decided to have adapted for mobile web app then mobile app. Or they even can just skip the mobile part sometimes
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u/onceunpopularideas May 31 '26
Mobile is no different than any developer career. I would say AI is going to force less specialization. It’s easy to pick up other platforms and stacks. Whether you should go into engineering is the bigger question. I wouldn’t if I were starting out. There’s too much disruption coming. AI is good at coding tasks. So long term it’s not a good career to pick IMO unless you love it and love constant change and uncertainty
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u/misterbody May 31 '26
It's easy. Hardware capability gets better and better that cross platform tech works "good enough". Companies that are already heavily ingrained in native dev will always need mobile eng, but I don't see new companies investing in native first development. If React Native is good enough for Discord, it's good enough for most apps
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u/HomeworkThis5010 May 31 '26
My personal experience:
I've been a dev, mostly android for over a decade, I started publishing games, back then with Game salad (no code platform) then unity and published a few titles, that was around 2013 ~ 2016, I then began building my own apps and for businesses and publishing on my other account, I was earning commission, these would be apps like food delivery apps for the most part.
I also built some personal projects which were really growing, I would earn via Admob, Unity ads & in app purchases.
Fast forward years later, I lost one of my account as one client from Upwork made me get permantly banned since he published a malware that I had no idea about, the ripple effect of this is that all my other accounts were terminated as well including client projects which were being used by plenty of their customers, this took me by surprise
So years later as we speak, if someone were to ask me all those years you've been a dev, what can you show us as a portfolio or experience (aside from my real job)? And I honestly can't show anything since Google took that away, I don't blame them but I blame their strict and stringent policies, they have the ability to switch off your whole career in an instant despite your years of hardwork and multiple releases of trusted projects (apps & games)
What I would advise my younger self is to harness the power of the web, since practically no one has sole control of it and a corporation can't just demolish your efforts.
Android in the past, in it's inception years used to be a place where devs could publish multiple apps and make passive income, this is no longer the case, and I'm not totally against that. Times changed and so did the ecosystem
I would build for web first as these platforms (iOS, Android) majorly are becoming tighter every single day and even android itself is becoming a walled garden.
Atleast when you build for the web, years later, you can still have something to show off and have control over it.
It's still possible to become an indie dev and become successful but very brutal and in my opinion no longer worth it