Application development market to hit $227 mn in 2012

The India application development (AD) software market to reach more than $227 million in 2012, an increase of 22.6 percent over 2011, forecasts Gartner. Evolving software delivery models, new development methodologies, emerging mobile application development, open source software, cloud and mobility will drive the growth.

“Application modernization and increasing agility will continue to be a solid driver for AD spending, apart from other emerging dynamics of cloud, mobility and social computing,” said Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner. He added, “These emerging trends are directing AD demand towards newer architectures, programming languages, business model and user skills.”

Cloud is changing the way applications are designed, tested and deployed, resulting in a significant shift in AD priorities. Cost is a major driver, but also agility, flexibility and speed to deploy new applications. 90 percent of large, mainstream enterprises and government agencies will use some aspect of cloud computing by 2015.

Gartner predicts that mobile AD projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4:1 by 2015. Emerging mobile applications, systems and devices are transforming the AD space rapidly, and are one of the top three CIO priorities at the enterprise level. Gartner research found that CIOs expect more than 20 percent of their employees to use tablets instead of laptops by 2013, hastening the process of change as AD tools and applications evolve to address the requirements of these new devices.