> it's also one of the highest-paying software niches

Thats a myth, app development is one of lowest-paying software niches. Many don't even earn enough to recover their $99 fee.

Sure, Apple hands out a huge pile of cash but almost all of it goes to King, SuperCell and other big corps.

My IOS app business failed and I was forced to take a job at a company with a free iOS app. Net result?

I still make $1,000 to $2,000 a month from my old apps, without updating them.

I now make over $130k a year (salary + benefits) in my day job doing iOS development, in a city with one of the lowest large city cost of living in the U.S.

Apple just announced they've paid out over $70B to iOS App developers since the store opened. You don't have to be an owner of King or SuperCell to have gotten your share of that money.

I don't know about your apps, they may be great and 1K a month may be what you consider a great success.

But multiple studies have shown that only a select few make the big bucks:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/21/the-majority-of-todays-app...

I'm talking about salaries working for one of those big corps, and I'm talking specifically about iOS, which is higher than Android when comparing mid-level and senior salaries. This is based from what I've seen on Glassdoor, and from talking to recruiters in my area (SoCal).

I know some people who own "app shops". They can only afford to hire students because the app business doesn't pay that well anymore. Also, they can't afford to do native app, it's almost always HTML5 or something similar.

Different worlds I guess...

I highly doubt iOS will die out, but I can see the market getting over-saturated with mobile developers for the number of jobs available.