Information technology (IT) companies in Vietnam are in need of personnel in mobile application programming due to a shortage of workers in the field, the Ha Noi Moi (New Hanoi) daily reported.

Smart phones have become popular among Vietnamese people in recent years, especially the youth, with 20 percent of the country’s population using smart phones in 2014.

The rapidly growing use of smart phones has resulted in increasing demand for mobile programming workers.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Centre of Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labour Market Information, the demand for IT personnel in the first half of last year accounted for more than 7 percent of the total vacancies. Up to 15 percent of the IT job vacancies were in mobile programming and continued to hike during the last half of the year.

The city is forecast to need 16,000-20,000 IT workers every year, including 2,000-2,500 in mobile programming. Acting Director of the centre Tran Anh Tuan predicts more than 10,000 mobile programming vacancies in the southern region.

Experts pointed to the serious labour shortage in this sphere as likely to linger in the next several years, noting the limited quality of current mobile programming workers.

They also said though there are a number of universities in HCM City offering IT courses, they lack adequate attention to intensive training in mobile programming.

The demand for mobile programming personnel will follow the upward trend this year due to the continually-expanding use of smart phone applications, promising numerous opportunities for tech savvy youth, said Le Thanh Tung, Vice Dean of the Science and Technology Faculty at the HCM City-based Hoa Sen University.-VNA