Global sales of smartphones exceeded those of all personal computers combined last year, with vendors shipping roughly 490 million smartphones, according to reports from IDC and Canalys. This was well above the estimated 414 million client PCs (including tablets and netbooks) shipped last year.
Canalys released its comparison of smartphone and PC shipments the same day that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy generated 243,000 nonfarm jobs in January. A look at job openings at some of the wireless industry’s major players shows that the smartphone boom is indeed driving hiring. In addition to the half million ““app economy” jobs, hundreds of thousands of jobs are related to the manufacturing, marketing and selling of smartphones.
Though Samsung did manage to sell more smartphones last year, Apple (AAPL) currently lists more job openings than Samsung, with 648 software engineerin, and 547 hardware engineering jobs currently listed – most in Silicon Valley. Samsung lists roughly 300 engineering jobs on its website, mostly in Silicon Valley, with some in Austin and Dallas.
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The nation’s largest wireless carrier, Verizon Wireless (VZ), currently lists 885 job openings in sales, 101 technical job openings related to its network development and maintenance and 90 IT jobs. Marketing and customer service jobs seem easier to fill – there are only 28 of each listed on the company’s website.
Qualcomm (QCOM) is setting the standard for chip design in several areas of smartphone manufacturing, and job growth at the California company has been robust. Currently the company lists 512 engineering jobs, with sales and marketing jobs much harder to come by. Only six sales jobs and 15 marketing jobs are listed on its website.