Ireland is a hotbed of mobile app development: Microsoft ‘evangelist’

MICROSOFT views Ireland as a hotbed of mobile app development, according to the IT giant’s in-house “architect evangelist” Josh Holmes.

Such is the Irish appetite for apps that Holmes yesterday had to relocate a workshop to Vienna Woods Hotel, having oversold in a smaller Cork hotel. Since moving from the US to Dublin in February, Holmes has seen Microsoft’s BizSpark programme soar to 600 start-ups and around 170 Irish-created Microsoft apps hit the market.

“The technology industry in Ireland is really exploding,” he said. “I moved here from the US because I saw the number of Irish firms looking to get into this business. Nonetheless, the response in Cork was surprising.