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

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.

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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.