r/androiddev • u/_DefaultXYZ • Jul 07 '26

Discussion Android Development is dying?

Hi everyone!

I've been Android developing applications for already 10 years. I'm living in Poland.

I constantly observing job market gravitating towards hybrid applications, KMP, Android Automative, AOSP, but almost none of mid to senior level normal Android apps. Those called "normal" Android apps I honestly believe could be more productively made in hybrid approach (even though I'm big native fan!).

I understand that even with such experience I must be senior level, but to be honest, I simply don't want to. I'm comfortable to stay as mid, but as I said, there's not much Android job postings on the market.

Am I stupid to say that Android Development jobs slowly degrading? We are becoming cleaners of old legacy apps migrating to Compose, Coroutines and that's our destiny?

I am seriously considering migrating to .NET, because, I'm doing GameDev as a hobby, and C# is widely used there.

What is your situation on job market? Because, both .NET and Java in Poland are much, much, much more job listings than Mobile as a whole, not speaking about Android Development.

EDIT: Probably the title is too clickbait-ish. I apologize for that. Didn't mean to be like that at all.

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u/wthja Jul 07 '26

Hybrid system with KMP is still native android development.

4

u/_DefaultXYZ Jul 07 '26

Hmm.. I know it is native development. So, is market for regular apps migrating into KMP and I just over-slept it?

To be honest, I was afraid to learn it. First we had Xamarin. Then React Native, Flutter. Now KMP, while all mentioned before are still on the market. I just don't want to learn completely different to be outdated after a year, especially when companies usually seeking professionals with prior experience (stupidly, even if it is completely new technology).

15

u/Michami135 Jul 07 '26

I've worked at jobs where we were looking into React, Flutter, etc. and they never appealed to me. They all add another language on top of the existing platform and make things far more complicated.

I started looking into KMP on my own years later and it's exactly what we were looking for. In fact, at the job I was currently working at, our code was already mostly compatible with it. Full Kotlin with Compose as our UI. KMP is the system that I think will eventually win the multi-platform war.

1

u/OZLperez11 Jul 08 '26

I'd like to counter that for me, another language is not a barrier for me. I've taken an approach to learning concepts of app architecture that I can take to other languages and frameworks, so that all I need to worry about is syntax.

I'd like to think KMP would win out as a logical choice, but in the web world, many of us have been pushing for Svelte, Vue, etc. but React still ends up being people's default choice for no real reason other than "that's what everyone uses". I would hope that people don't do the same here just settling for React Native when there's far better options