The market for low-code, no-code, and intelligent developer technologies (LCNCIDT) continues to see strong demand from professional and non-technical developers. A new International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast shows worldwide LCNCIDT revenue growing to US$21 billion in 2026 with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.8% from 2021-2026.

The IDC report, Worldwide Low-Code, No-Code, and Intelligent Developer Technologies Forecast, 2022–2026, presents a five-year revenue forecast for the worldwide low-code, no-code, and intelligent developer technologies market. The report includes forecast details by market segment, deployment type (public cloud services (operating distributor or own IP), and on premises/other), and geographic region. The forecast is based on the events, market conditions, and macroeconomic assumptions represented in the Worldwide Black Book: Live Edition (November 2022).

According to the report, enterprises are implementing LCNCIDT technologies to improve developer productivity, either by enabling professional developers to work more quickly by streamlining or eliminating aspects of the development process, or by providing non-technical developers with tools they can use to create or update digital solutions without the help of professional developers.

"The market for LCNCDIT technologies is being driven by the global shortage of full-time developers," says Michele Rosen, Research Manager, LCNCDIT at IDC. 

"This situation is expected to continue throughout this decade, creating a strong market for technologies that increase developer productivity or expand the potential pool of developers."

Adopting cloud-native technologies partly drives growth in LCNCIDT as organizations pivot toward a digital-first world. The advantages of cloud-native software development include increased agility, lower hosting costs, faster time to market, and improvements to user experience. However, this approach entails cost and operations management risks, especially if the organization needs in-house expertise. 

Vendors that provide LCNCIDT developer tools that enable the transition to and management of cloud-native software development, including cloud-native design tools, IDEs, and DevOps tools, have an opportunity to assist organizations with this complex but necessary transition.

Many of the capabilities provided by low-code and no-code tools benefit from cloud-based development, and many intelligent developer technologies rely on cloud-based services. As a result, much of the LCNCIDT revenue over the past several years has been generated from cloud-based deployments. IDC expects this trend to continue, with more than 75% of market revenue generated by cloud deployments by 2026.

The LCNCDIT competitive market includes the products that enable professional developers to work more quickly by streamlining or eliminating aspects of the development process and that expand the developer population by providing non-technical developers with development interfaces that abstract away some or all of the knowledge required to code in traditional development environments. 

The market comprises low-code developer technologies, which provide visually guided developer tools, drag-and-drop development interfaces, prebuilt code components and templates, and tools for modelling and integrating processes and data to accelerate and simplify the design and development of custom digital solutions. 

Low-code developer technologies include application development platforms, web development platforms, UI/UX components, and database-centric low-code application development platforms.

Another market component is no-code developer technologies, which provide visually guided, model-driven, and/or AI-driven technologies to enable the creation of software (apps, websites, etc.) by developers who do not have a technical background. No-code developer technologies do not expose developers to command-line code. These technologies include application development platforms, web development platforms, and UI/UX design tools.

The third component of the market is intelligent developer technologies, which leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate software development or the development of AI-powered digital solutions. Intelligent developer technologies include code autocompletion tools, AI development technologies, conversational AI development tools and platforms, and test automation.