‘App economy’ job prospects booming

The industry has created over 500,000 jobs in five years.

David Holtkamp, founder and CEO of Crimson Moon Entertainment, developed the iGun app for iPhone and now employs five people in Washington Twp.

Ty Greenlees/Staff Photo David Holtkamp, founder and CEO of Crimson Moon Entertainment, developed the iGun app for iPhone and now employs five people in Washington Twp.

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By Dave Larsen, Staff Writer Updated 10:05 AM Monday, February 13, 2012

The mobile applications market, a high-tech industry with a small but growing presence in Dayton, has grown to $10 billion in worth and created an estimated 466,000 jobs in the U.S. in just five years, demonstrating how economic value and jobs can be quickly created through innovation, according to a new study.

The so-called “app economy” is driven by the creation and marketing of small programs for smartphones, computer tablets and online social networks. It has created 311,000 jobs at companies making the apps and another 155,000 at businesses who have expanded their payrolls because of the economic ripple effect, according to a study released last week by the trade group TechNet.

That’s up from zero jobs in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced and Facebook opened its site to gaming and other applications for its growing audience.

App economy jobs include programmers, user interface designers, marketers, managers and support staff.

Ohio doesn’t rank among the top states for this fast-growing jobs sector, but a number of Dayton-area startups are tapping into the industry, which is expected to grow as smartphone services become central to everyday life.

“The App Store is only continuing to grow,” said David Holtkamp, owner and founder of Crimson Moon Entertainment in Washington Twp.

“Things which were previously done on your standard desktop computer are moving so everyone can easily do those tasks on the go wherever they want,” he said.

About 40 billion applications have been downloaded from the iTunes App Store and Android Market since their debuts, according to Flurry, a mobile analytics firm.

Crimson Moon created the popular iPhone app iGunPro, a firearms simulator that was launched in January 2010 and reached No. 9 on the App Store’s list of top paid applications.

The iGunPro app has been downloaded more than 5.2 million times globally in just the last six months. It is now offered free with additional paid in-app content, which “creates a more consistent amount of income,” Holtkamp said.

Holtkamp, 26, launched his entertainment start-up for $300, the cost of an iPod and Apple developer subscription. He declined to disclose his company’s annual earnings, but said the app has been “very profitable.”

Crimson Moon has six full-time employees including Holtkamp and his wife. He hired two computer engineers last month to help speed up product development and currently is looking to hire a PHP Web developer.

In Ohio, there aren’t enough people with the proper skills and experience “just because the industry is so new,” he said.

Ohio’s information services sector accounts for more than 170,000 jobs, according to JobsOhio, the state’s private nonprofit economic development agency.

Ohio ranks 10th in the U.S. for employment in both computer systems design and related services with 52,400 jobs, and Internet and telecommunications services with 40,200 jobs, officials said.

The number of Ohio app economy jobs was not available, a spokeswoman said.

College campuses have been struggling to attract students into the computer science and computer engineering disciplines, despite high job placement in those fields, said Jason Eckert, director of University of Dayton Career Services.

Several 2011 UD graduates are working in application development positions at both traditional corporations and startups in Chicago, San Francisco and Boulder, Colo., he said.

TuneWiki, an award-winning social music player for mobile phones, has been “very active in recruiting on campus,” Eckert said. The company is based in California and has its programming headquarters in Centerville, he said.

The app economy presents “a great opportunity” for students to develop a marketable skill and build some income, said Arijit Sengupta, an associate professor of business at Wright State University’s Raj Soin College of Business.

Wright State will offer an elective course in app development starting this fall through its business school.

“App development is about 80 percent programming and 20 percent marketing and business plan,” said Sengupta, who has created five apps with information about various U.S. toll roads that are available in both the App Store and Android Market.

The Dayton Web development company Sparkbox has launched an iPad matching game app, as well as two interactive iPhone apps for children under the A Modern Eden brand.

However, the company is focusing on Web applications that work through smartphone browsers because “the Web is the unifying technology that all the devices share,” said Ben Callahan, Sparkbox’s president.

Mobile browsing is predicted to surpass Web browsing by 2014, according to a Morgan Stanley Internet trends report.

Smartphone sales surpassed traditional computers in 2011. The research group Canalys estimated that 487.7 million smartphones were shipped last year, up more than 60 percent from 2010.

Personal computer shipments also increased to 414.6 million units including tablets, growing at a slower rate of 15 percent from 2010.

Mobile app usage skyrocketed to 94 minutes a day as of December, up 42 percent from 66 minutes in December 2010, according to Flurry.

Traditional Web browser use rose 2.8 percent to 72 minutes per day during the same period.

Mobile app usage hasn’t come at the expense of browsing the traditional Web, but rather because people are using mobile apps more, Flurry said.

The TechNet study analyzed detailed information from the Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine database, a compilation of want ads, to estimate the number of jobs in the app economy.

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