Android rocks, iOS not so much: the 50 fastest growing online jobs right now

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If you’re in Android developer chances are your services could soon be in high demand. The same is less true of iOS developers, although if you also happen to have a talent for developing for Windows Phone, there could be new gaps in the market for you to exploit.

If you’re looking for the real job of the future though, maybe you should try copy typing. In the last few months it’s boomed and is now the fastest growing online job out there.

That’s according to the latest stats from online jobs portal Freelancer.com. Growth in iOS jobs, it says, fell to eight percent in Q3 after hitting 30% last quarter. The company reckons that’s largely down to the mixed reaction given to the iPhone 5 and wait for iOS 6’s September launch.

Buoyed by the weak iOS 6 launch comes Android, which saw a huge 16% growth in jobs in the quarter, spurred on by the rave success of the Samsung Galaxy S III and release of the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update in July.

The iOS 6 flop, says the jobs portal, also leaves room for a Microsoft revival, with CEO Steve Ballmer banking on the recent release of its touch-optimised Windows 8 and its variants to resurrect the fortunes of the ailing software giant. Q4 will be crucial for Microsoft — a strong showing may mean the difference between a stunning revival, or slowly fading away into the annals of history.

If it pays off, that means there’ll be a lot of Windows Phone development jobs out there for the taking.

Get typing son

If mobile development isn’t your thing, maybe you could give copy typing a whirl. As more and more companies go digital, copy typing and the translation of paper documents to electronic is booming. This quarter the job category grew 145%.

It’s still a coder’s world out there though, especially in the interactive space. HTML5 jobs grew 44% as businesses and entrepreneurs scramble to bridge the gap between their fixed and
mobile clients. jQuery, the javascript library of choice of interactive web apps increased by 32%. PHP jobs meanwhile rose 19% to a whopping 35 061 jobs this quarter as Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans promised increased mobile functionality for the lingua franca of the Web. CSS and MySQL similarly saw strong growth, up 19% and 18% respectively.

eBay and Facebook make comebacks

Jobs involving work on eBay and Facebook both made a comeback in Q3, with the ecommerce platform seeing especially large growth.

Demand for eBay jobs grew a 41%, with consumer confidence improving ahead of the holiday season, and on the back of eBay announcing a number of changes and previewing a new site design. The design changes are intended to carry the e-commerce site into the social and mobile era.

The renewed confidence in Facebook, which grew 11%, meanwhile was largely as a result of its share price stabilising and assurances that by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that it is serious about mobile.

A more stable Facebook also allowed jobs in social networking as a whole to grow 15% during the quarter.

The online marketing industry is also recovering after a flurry of Panda and Penguin updates from Google sent it haywire in Q2. This saw slumps across a broad range of categories related to search engine optimization. Internet Marketing, SEO and Link Building (up 8% to 7068 jobs) are all experiencing moderate growth again.

There has also been a new focus on content and user experience, as internet marketing experts wise up to Google’s endgame. Reflecting this is a surge in jobs related to WordPress, Proofreading, User Interface/IA, Graphic Design and Logo Design.

“This report truly reflects Mary Meeker’s thesis that through software and the internet we’re experiencing the reimagination of everything”, said Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of
Freelancer.com. “Every industry we can think of is quite abruptly turning into a software business, and every job function is increasingly being performed using software tools in the cloud. This online job report tracks the current leaders and laggards of this transformation.”

Rank

Job Category

Q3 2012

Q2 2012

Growth

1

Copy Typing

6932

2826

145%

2

HTML5

3038

2108

44%

3

eBay

1470

1039

41%

4

jQuery / Prototype

2972

2245

32%

5

WordPress

7703

6084

27%

6

Proofreading

1730

1373

26%

7

User Interface / IA

2156

1755

23%

8

Graphic Design

27221

22585

21%

9

Logo Design

6940

5759

21%

10

PHP

35061

29369

19%

11

CSS

7099

5982

19%

12

MySQL

11007

9336

18%

13

Sales

4078

3472

17%

14

Website Design

27051

23078

17%

15

Android

4004

3439

16%

16

HTML

25893

22257

16%

17

Social Networking

6138

5298

16%

18

Magento

2029

1752

16%

19

Software Architecture

5899

5095

16%

20

Shopping Carts

3060

2644

16%

21

Marketing

7581

6567

15%

22

Blog

4074

3578

14%

23

Joomla

3119

2740

14%

24

Reviews

2739

2415

13%

25

eCommerce

3932

3468

13%

26

Mobile Phone

6410

5704

12%

27

SEO

10509

9383

12%

28

Internet Marketing

15475

13819

12%

29

Facebook

7193

6495

11%

30

Advertising

4996

4522

10%

31

Flash

2737

2519

9%

32

AJAX

4027

3707

9%

33

Link Building

7068

6524

8%

34

iPhone

5509

5107

8%

35

Leads

2856

2652

8%

36

Ghostwriting

4088

3807

7%

37

Photoshop

5942

5756

3%

38

Article Rewriting

6468

6286

3%

39

Articles

11372

11267

1%

40

Data Processing

21282

21240

0%

41

Excel

22556

22914

-2%

42

Javascript

6543

6705

-2%

43

Data Entry

29399

30881

-5%

44

Web Search

5513

5910

-7%

45

Article Submission

2379

2672

-11%

46

BPO

4496

5212

-14%

47

Copywriting

9648

11814

-18%

48

Virtual Assistant

3002

3763

-20%

49

Web Scraping

2512

3229

-22%

50

Data Mining

1480

2333

-37%

This data was extracted from 230 614 jobs posted on Freelancer.com in Q3 2012, up from 189 917 in Q2. Freelancer.com claims that its Fast 50 is the leading gauge of online hiring trends.

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