Is an iOS Development Certificate Worth It?

Yes, enrolling in an iOS Developer certificate course or bootcamp is worth it, and for two main reasons: first, iOS Developers are in high demand, making it a rewarding career choice, and secondly, an iOS Developer certificate is perhaps the best way to gain the essential skills you’ll need to succeed as an iOS Developer.

If you’re uncertain how a certification in iOS development could benefit you, read on.

There’s a shortage of talent across many sectors of tech, and that skill scarcity is particularly disparate among app Developers.

Recruiting firm Randstad Technologies reported a 104 percent year-over-year demand increase between 2014 and 2016 for Mobile App Developers. CIO’s 2018 State of the CIO survey, meanwhile, found that 59 percent of CIOs reported problems with skills shortage, with 15 percent specifically reporting a shortage related to mobile development talent. The U.S. Department of Labor also predicts “much faster than average” 24 percent growth in the field by 2026, with an estimate of 302,500 new jobs.

Even such exponential gains could be considered a rather conservative expectation, given just how many companies have been slow to truly embrace mobile.

“There are a lot of companies that haven’t adopted a mobile-first mindset yet,” said Andrew Carlson, Digital Talent Recruiter at Planet4iT in Toronto. “So in that field, there’s still room for a lot of growth in terms of new roles and in terms of people getting better skills in that area. “There are a ton of companies that don’t have an app or a mobile presence at all, so that skillset is definitely very much in demand.”

Despite Android’s growth, iOS continues to be massively popular around the world – with promising indications in some key markets.

Apple sold 216.76 million iPhones in its 2017 fiscal year, a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year. A recent report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech revealed that iOS share in the U.S. is at roughly 40 percent and 49.4 percent in Great Britain, while a three-month gain of 4.6 percentage points in late 2017 in urban China gave iOS its best-ever market share there, at nearly 25 percent.

Apple continues to dominate in the tablet sphere as well, with iPad shipments growing to 43.8 million in 2017, good for a 26.8 percent share of the tablet market worldwide.

In other words, the demand for iOS-tailored apps simply isn’t going to go away.

Moreover, although Android might have a broader overall reach, Apple’s iOS has always been significantly more lucrative for app Developers. In 2016, iOS generated twice as much revenue through its App Store as Google Play did – $34 billion to $17 billion – and it’s projected by App Annie that in 2021, iOS total revenue will reach $60 billion while Google Play will reach $42 billion.

Becoming proficient in iOS development pays off.

According to an analysis from the career website Dice, iOS Developers in New York and San Francisco take home an average salary north of $125,000, while the average iOS Developer salary in Canada is $114,526, with intermediate Developers averaging $139,219, according to the job site Neuvoo.

The most recent Tech Salary Guide from Mondo cited Mobile App Developer as the most lucrative title among Developers, with salaries ranging from $100,000 at the low end to $175,000 at the high end.

There’s a direct correlation between skill set and salary, the Dice study notes. Specifically, knowing both Swift and the slightly older programming language Objective-C “looks really, really good on any resume.”

There’s no sugar-coating it – although anyone properly motivated can learn how to develop in iOS, there is a steep learning curve.

Many struggle at first to learn how to comfortably use Swift to program iOS apps. Others – especially those who aren’t intimately familiar with the Mac operating system – will need time to learn to use macOS to build the iOS binaries. Uploading the binaries in Xcode is another common stumbling block.

That’s where a certification course in iOS development can help aspiring Developers understand the unique challenges – and opportunities – involved with developing in iOS.

In BrainStation’s course, for instance, students begin with learning the fundamentals of programming with Swift – including types, objects, functions, and control flow – before gaining experience building iOS applications from scratch, using Swift libraries to add functionality. By the end of the course, students develop a sleek and user-friendly iOS application and learn how to deploy it to the App Store.