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Essential software development
statistics for 2026
February 10, 2026
Current software development market state
| The global custom software development market size is anticipated to grow from $53.02 billion in 2025 to $334.49 billion by 2034, at a CAGR of 22.71%. Enterprise software accounted for 61% of the market, with large enterprises holding the largest revenue share of over 61%. | |
|---|---|
| The global software market size was $823.92 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach around $2,248.33 billion by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 11.8% from 2025 to 2034. | |
| While North America remains dominant in the global application development market, the Asia–Pacific region is expected to experience the fastest growth during the 2025–2032 forecast period, driven by significant investments in IT infrastructure and digital initiatives in countries such as China, Japan, India, and South Korea. | |
| The software testing segment within the software engineering market is expected to hold a share of over 38% by 2032. | |
| IT spending on software is expected to increase by 9.8% globally in 2026, exceeding $6 trillion. | |
| The global IT outsourcing market size was valued at $618.13 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow from $638.65 billion in 2026 to $752.08 billion by 2031, at a CAGR of 3.32% during the forecast period. | |
| 72% of organizations outsource software development to achieve better access to talent (32%), meet increasing customer demands more efficiently (35%), optimize spending (34%), and improve quality or performance (33%). |
USD billion
Scheme title: Custom software development market | Size, by type, 2025-2034 (USD billion)
Data source: Precedence Research
Latest software development trends
Advancements in the tech industry are reshaping the way software is created, accelerating the development cycles, enabling developers to produce software of better quality, and ensuring better alignment with the market needs. Explore the most popular software development platforms, programming languages, and developer tools that are driving this transformation.
Software development platforms
| As of late 2025, mobile devices account for 53.52% of global platform share. | |
|---|---|
| The global mobile application market size is projected to grow from $330.02 billion in 2026 to $1,017.18 billion by 2034, at a CAGR of 15.1% during the forecast period. This growth is driven by the rapid digitalization across industries, a surge in mobile-first consumers, and the continuous rise of digital solutions. | |
| The global web development services market was valued at $80.6 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $125.4 billion by 2030, representing a CAGR of 9.3%. | |
| Remote access, real-time information availability, and no hardware-associated costs are expected to drive the growth of the web-based solutions segment, with CAGR of 21.1% a from 2025 to 2030. | |
| In 2025, desktop platforms accounted for approximately 45.8 % of global platform share, indicating that nearly half of digital activity still occurs on desktops despite mobile’s continued dominance. |
Programming languages
With dozens of programming languages existing, organizations should carefully choose the technology for their software development projects that best suits their specific type of software and will ensure its high performance, easy maintainability, and long-term viability. The following stats show the most popular programming languages and frameworks both among developers and companies.
| JavaScript, Python, and SQL are highly-desired languages among computer programmers, but Rust continues to be the most-admired programming language with a 72% score in 2025. | |
|---|---|
| According to the combined ranking based on the code usage and discussion frequency, JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, and C# were the most popular programming languages in 2025. | |
| TypeScript now ranks as the most popular language on GitHub, overtaking Python and JavaScript. Its growth highlights a shift toward typed languages that enhance reliability and support agent-assisted development in real-world projects. | |
| The more popular a programming language gets, the more developers take it up. For example, JavaScript has the largest community, with about 28 million developers worldwide, followed by Java (23.2 million), and Python (22.9 million). Swift (5.6 million) and Ruby (4.3 million) have seen a substantial increase in the number of developers using them, which appears to be attributed to the use of AI-assisted coding tools supporting these languages. Rust has managed to add around 1 million new coders every 12 months for the last four years, now having a community of 5.1 million developers. | |
| Professional developers most frequently use React (46.9%), jQuery (24.1%), Next.js (21.5%), Angular (19.8%), and Vue.js (18.4%) as frontend technologies. Node.js (49.1%), ASP.NET Core (21.3%), Express (20.3%), Spring Boot (15.6%), and ASP.NET (15%) are the most popular backend frameworks used in web development. | |
| Python is the most sought-after programming language, with 45.7% of recruiters seeking candidates with Python skills, followed by JavaScript (41.5%), Java (39.5%), TypeScript (27.9%), and C# (24.4%). | |
| Python is the most in-demand language as of January 2026, accounting for 43,300+ posted job openings. |
Scheme title: Most demanded programming languages by recruiters worldwide in 2025
Data source: Statista
Developer tools
AI-powered tools are increasingly used to write, test, and debug code, making it a prominent trend in the modern software development landscape.
| 84% of professionals are using or planning to use AI tools in their software development process. The most popular use cases include searching for answers (54.1%), generating content or synthetic data (35.8%), learning new concepts or technologies (33.1%), and documenting code (30.8%). | |
|---|---|
| 85 % of developers regularly use AI tools for writing code and development, and 62 % rely on at least one AI coding assistant in their workflows. | |
| Among the developer tools used for compiling, building, and testing, professional developers most frequently use Docker, a platform that enables building and managing software applications in containers (71.1%), and npm, the default package manager for Node.js (56.8%). |
Scheme title: Use of AI in the development workflow
Data source: Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey
Scheme title: AI in the development process: use cases
Data source: Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey
Low-code development
Low-code development platforms enable IT professionals and non-developers to quickly create application software using intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces, with minimum coding required. This approach considerably reduces time-to-market and lowers dependency on traditional IT teams compared to custom software development, which contributes to its expanding adoption globally.
| The low-code platform market is projected to reach $264.4 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 32.2%, up from $37.39 billion in 2025. This market growth is driven by the rising demand for custom applications and a global shortage of skilled software developers. | |
|---|---|
| Low-code development is seen as a key component for enhancing flexibility and agility in software development. 81% of the companies consider low-code development to be of strategic importance in their organization and 80% of companies find it relevant for faster software development. | |
| Increased process efficiency (53%) and employee productivity (51%) are named the most important benefits that low-code development adoption brings to companies. | |
| 56% of companies globally have already implemented low-code development platforms. Among these, 55% favor Microsoft Power Apps, 48% opt for Oracle, and 41% choose Salesforce. | |
| Companies across industries see low-code platforms as a strategic asset. BFSI (for developing customer-facing applications, enhancing process automation, and strengthening regulatory compliance through quick modifications), healthcare (for creating patient management systems and telehealth solutions that improve patient engagement), and manufacturing (for streamlining supply chain management and developing maintenance scheduling applications) are taking the lead. |
Scheme title: Key areas for low-code app deployment
Data source: KPMG’s Low-code adoption as a driver of digital transformation study
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Technology focus areas for 2026 & beyond
The technological environment is constantly evolving, with artificial intelligence gaining traction more than other technologies in 2026. Organizations across verticals are investing in AI to automate diverse workflows, improve business profitability, and keep up with the competition. Cloud computing, data analytics, and the Internet of Things also remain key areas of focus, having secured a stable presence in core business strategies.
Artificial intelligence
The field of artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving, attracting growing investments, expanding machine learning market coverage and use cases, revealing new trends in conversational AI, and bringing major implementation challenges to light.
| About half of global venture capital in 2025 was directed to AI-focused companies, with funding reaching $211 billion. | |
|---|---|
| 79% of organizations are already using or trying AI and ML PaaS services. | |
| 88% of companies state that their digital transformation initiatives powered by AI and automation (including generative AI) have positively impacted their organization’s profitability. | |
| Almost three-quarters of organizations see positive business outcomes from their AI investments, with only 31% achieving them at scale. | |
| By deploying AI for data breach prevention, including attack surface management, red-teaming, and posture management, organizations can save up to $2.2 million on data breach costs. | |
| Generative AI is the most frequently deployed AI solution in organizations, with 71% of companies reporting that they use genAI in at least one business function. | |
| 32% of business leaders would use proprietary AI technologies, 32% have no preferences, while 29% would opt for open-source AI. Among the latter portion of respondents, 63% name cost a key reason for their preference. | |
| AI agent development is accelerating across enterprises, as 61% of CEOs report that their organizations are actively adopting AI agents and preparing to scale their implementation. | |
| IT service management (47%) and customer service/support automation (40%) are the top AI use cases that companies invest in. | |
| AI initiatives are most advanced or scaled within organizations’ IT (28%), operations (11%), marketing (10%), customer service (8%), and cybersecurity (8%) functions. | |
| Nearly three-quarters of respondents say their most advanced generative AI implementation initiative is meeting (43%) or exceeding (31%) their ROI expectations. | |
| 78% of organizations expect to increase their overall AI spending this fiscal year. | |
| Among the key challenges organizations face when developing and deploying generative AI solutions are concerns about regulatory compliance (38%), risk management difficulties (32%), implementation hurdles (27%), and a shortage of technical talent and skills (26%). |
Scheme title: Benefits achieved vs benefits sought
Data source: Deloitte’s 2025 State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report
Q: What are the key benefits you hope to achieve through your Generative AI efforts? (Select up to three
benefits) To what extent are you achieving those benefits to date?
2021 2022 2023 First half of 2024 Second half of 2024
Scheme title: Number of business functions in which organizations use AI
Data source: McKinsey’s 2025 The state of AI report
Cloud technologies
The increasing volumes of data handled by organizations and the need for scalable data storage together with the benefits of cloud-based applications over traditional on-premises software systems, such as ease of access, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, are driving the widespread adoption of cloud technologies.
| The global cloud computing market size was $943.65 billion in 2025. Driven by demand for scalable, high-performance cloud infrastructures, it is projected to reach $3,349.61 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 16% from 2026 to 2033. | |
|---|---|
| By 2028, over 90% of newly developed applications will be deployed in multicloud, architected to run seamlessly across distributed platforms and leverage platform-native capabilities. Moreover, more than 60% of businesses will have modernized up to 50% of their cloud architectures by 2027 to encourage infrastructure and cost efficiency and enable business and technical innovation. | |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most popular cloud platform among software developers worldwide, with around 43.3% having used it in 2025. Microsoft Azure ranks second, being used by 26.3% of developers. | |
| 70% of companies adopt hybrid cloud strategies, employing at least one public and one private cloud. | |
| 60% of all organizations turn to managed services providers to get assistance with managing their public cloud workloads. | |
| In 2025, the cost of cloud services continues to be a key consideration, as enterprises spend on average 35% more on cloud resources than needed to meet their business objectives. | |
| In cloud development, managing cloud spend has been the top challenge (84%) for the third year in a row. Other concerns include security (77%, previously the top challenge), managing software licences (75%), governance (75%), and lack of resources or expertise (75%). |
Image title: Organizations embrace multi-cloud
Image source: Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report
Image title: Hybrid cloud strategies organizations adopt
Image source: Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report
Data analytics & BI
With the growing volumes of data that organizations generate today, the need for robust data management and analytics solutions to process this information and derive valuable insights out of it becomes vital to support timely, informed decision-making.
| The global data analytics market size was estimated at $82.23 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow from $104.39 billion in 2026 to $495.87 billion by 2034 at a CAGR of 21.50%. | |
|---|---|
| Because of continued data complexity and volumes, rising demand for simplified analytics solutions, advancements in AI/ML, and expanding adoption of self-service analytics, the augmented analytics market has been experiencing exponential growth in recent years and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25.7% to $41.23 billion in 2029. | |
| By 2027, augmented analytics capabilities will evolve into autonomous analytics platforms that fully manage and execute 20% of business processes. | |
| By 2027, AI agents will augment or automate 50% of business decisions to enhance decision intelligence and by 2029, one in ten global boards will use AI guidance to evaluate executive decisions critical to their organizations. |
Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT technology is widely adopted across diverse industries and applications, from helping monitor patient health in healthcare to enabling predictive maintenance in industrial settings, transforming from an emerging technology into a critical business tool.
| The global IoT market size is projected to grow from $547.06 billion in 2025 to $865.20 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 9.6% during the forecast period. | |
|---|---|
| The global number of IoT devices is projected to more than double, growing from 19.8 billion in 2025 to over 40.6 billion by 2034. | |
| IoT devices are deployed across all industry verticals and consumer markets, with the consumer segment representing roughly 60% of all connected devices in 2025. |
Key stats about enterprise software development
The enterprise software market is the fastest-growing segment of the IT industry, and strong demand for solutions supporting key business functions is expected to drive its further growth in the coming years.
| While the large-enterprise segment represented by large corporations accounted for over 60% of the global enterprise software market share, the percentage of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is expected to grow at a considerable rate of almost 14% by 2034. | |
|---|---|
| The CRM software market is expected to steadily expand at an annual growth rate of 9.80% from 2026 to 2030, driven by increasing demand worldwide, reaching a market volume of over $158.55 billion by 2030. | |
| The need to manage and integrate complex processes across departments stimulates companies to implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for real-time data sharing and analysis, improved efficiency, reduced operational costs, and faster, more informed decisions. This drives the growth of the global ERP market, which is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 11.7% from 2025 to 2030. The cloud ERP segment is projected to grow even faster (13.5%), with cloud technologies making ERP systems more affordable while offering unmatched accessibility, flexibility, and scalability. | |
| The global supply chain management software market size was estimated at about $33.39 billion in 2025, with its growth fueled by the rising number of small and mid-sized companies, the expansion of ecommerce, and the rising demand for medical supply distribution management. Among all supply chain management sectors, procurement and sourcing were at the top, accounting for a share of around 36%, as companies adopted this type of software to mitigate risks of supply disruptions, raw material cost fluctuations, and geopolitical uncertainty. | |
| With the surge of the working population, employee bases become larger and more diverse, calling for more advanced solutions for effective workforce management. This drives the growth of the global human resource (HR) technology market, which is projected to grow from $43.66 billion in 2025 to $81.84 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 9.2% during the forecast period. | |
| As companies increasingly rely on their business data to get actionable insights and support informed decision-making, Business Intelligence (BI) is projected to become the fastest-growing category in the enterprise software market from 2026 to 2034. |
Developer workforce, demographics & work environment
The global software development workforce continues to expand, representing a diverse talent pool in terms of age, experience, and education. While developers’ work priorities remain the same over time, team dynamics and work models are gradually changing.
| In 2025, the number of software developers worldwide reached about 20.8 million, with the largest number in China (4.04 million), the United States (3.18 million), and India (3.85 million). | |
|---|---|
| Nearly half of developers worldwide have over 6 years of experience, reflecting a mature and skilled workforce. | |
| In 2025, 42.1% of software developers globally held bachelor’s degrees, over 26.2% held master’s degrees, and around 5.5% had obtained some sort of professional degree. | |
| With the possibilities generative AI gives to developers, it is predicted that the share of software development team members that come from nontraditional software engineering or technical educational backgrounds will rise from 20% in 2025 to 40% by 2028. | |
| Nearly one-third of developers worked fully remotely in 2025, while the share of developers following a hybrid work model declined to 37.1%, and the proportion working fully in-person fell to 17.9%. | |
| In 2025, developers named work-life balance (42.80%), great colleagues (37.28%), and salary (32.74%) as their priorities. | |
| When considering a job change, developers primarily look for higher salaries (44.87%) and better advancement opportunities (43.91%). |
Age distribution
Image title: Professional developers by age groups
Image source: JetBrains
Age distribution
Image title: Years of professional work experience
Image source: JetBrains
Software development job market trends & annual salaries
Despite some layoffs, the demand for software developers and related experts remains strong. However, employment opportunities vary significantly by region, with some developers finding local markets competitive.
| Employment of software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers is projected to grow by 17% (much faster than the average across other occupations) from 2023 to 2033, adding approximately 327,900 jobs. | |
|---|---|
| Strong demand for cloud-based services and data centers is expected to create new jobs in the computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services, with employment in this industry projected to grow by 19.5% from 2023 to 2033. | |
| Almost half of developers (43%) reported there were small-scale or mass layoffs in companies they worked for in the past two years. However, only 11% claim to be insecure to some extent about losing their job. | |
| 46% of software developers state that it’s somewhat or very challenging to get a job in their city or area. | |
| 36.4% of full-time developers earn between $50,001 and $200,000 per year, which highlights strong earning potential in the software development industry. Another 30.5% fall within the $10,001 to $50,000 range, representing a solid middle-income group. A smaller segment (7.9%) makes over $200,000 annually, reflecting the high-value IT roles. This diversity in wage estimates underscores the variety of career paths and opportunities within the developer community. |
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Software development methodologies & practices
The majority of organizations prefer Agile frameworks to other software development methodologies, although sequential methods prevail in certain contexts where preliminary planning is essential or iterative software releases are impractical.
| 74% of organizations now use hybrid, blended, or custom Agile models, which implies widespread use of Agile methodologies in delivery practices. | |
|---|---|
| 84% of organizations are using or planning to use AI in their software delivery lifecycle. | |
| 41% of organizations increased spending on Agile over the past two years, showing continued confidence in Agile even amid economic pressures. | |
| 68% of companies report increased employee satisfaction as a result of their organization implementing SAFe for project management. |
Current software development challenges
In 2026, organizations face a set of challenges, with security recognized as the most pressing concern among tech leaders. At the same time, talent shortages, especially in AI and cybersecurity-related roles, are putting additional strain on organizations.
| More than half of tech leaders (51%) identified security as the biggest software development challenge for 2025. Companies also saw the reliability of AI-generated code (45%), the incorporation of AI into the development process (44%), and ensuring data privacy (41%) as top concerns. | |
|---|---|
| One of the challenges that technology companies face in 2025 is the talent shortage, with respondents finding it difficult to fill in the roles of AI specialists (28%), IT security engineers (16%), and cybersecurity engineers (13%). | |
| Cybersecurity was named one of the major concerns (48%) across organizations, triggered by the rapid digitization of business processes, rising threat of ransomware attacks, and AI-driven cyber risks. |
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Today, organizations feel the pressing need to adopt the latest technological advancements to stay competitive. However, they often struggle to confidently approach software development projects given the complexity and ever-changing nature of today’s technology environment as well as economic uncertainties. Partnering with a reliable software company can offer the expertise and strategic guidance needed to foster innovation while effectively navigating potential challenges and ensuring successful software project outcomes.
FAQs
Software developers design, build, test, integrate, and maintain software solutions. They closely collaborate with project managers, product managers, and other project stakeholders throughout the software development lifecycle to effectively translate business needs and objectives into scalable software solutions. Depending on the organization, from startups to large enterprises, their responsibilities may also include code reviews, mentoring junior developers, and contributing to technical decision-making.
The five principles, traditionally referred to as SOLID, are Single Responsibility, Open/Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion. These software design principles were introduced by Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) and were aimed to help developers create software that is maintainable and easy to scale.
- Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) implies that a class or module should have only one job or purpose within the software system.
- Open/Closed Principle (OCP) states that new functionality should be added through extension rather than by altering existing stable code.
- Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) ensures that any class that is the child of a parent class should be usable in place of its parent without any unexpected behaviour.
- Interface Segregation Principle (ISP) focuses on avoiding fat interfaces and giving preference to many small client-specific interfaces.
- Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP) suggests that classes should rely on abstractions such as interfaces or abstract classes rather than concrete implementations.
Successful software developers combine strong problem-solving abilities with a solid background in computer science, including knowledge of data structures, algorithm design, and how different operating systems work. In addition to technical expertise, developers should possess soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and time management. These skills are especially important when collaborating with senior developers and other team members or working in distributed, remote-friendly teams. To strengthen their portfolios, many developers pursue a specialization, such as backend, frontend, data engineering, or cloud development, and enhance their credibility through industry certifications.
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