Large Companies Are Switching to Swift: The Main Trend in Mobile Development 2025

Large Companies Are Switching to Swift (iOS/macOS): The Main Trend of 2025

2025 has become a turning point for mobile and desktop development within the Apple ecosystem. While in recent years Swift has been steadily gaining popularity among startups and indie developers, now industry giants are finally making the switch. Google, Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, and LinkedIn are just a few of the companies that have announced a full or partial transition to Swift for their iOS and macOS applications.

What is behind this trend, and why are they abandoning Objective-C and even cross-platform solutions? Let's break it down.

Reasons for the Mass Migration to Swift

• Performance and Code Safety. Swift demonstrates speed comparable to C++, while strong typing and memory management (ARC) reduce the number of critical errors. For large projects with millions of users, this is a direct path to reducing bugs and testing time.
• SwiftUI and Modern Architecture. The declarative framework SwiftUI allows for faster interface creation and code reuse between iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. Companies save up to 30% of time on UI development.
• Support from Apple and the Community. Apple is actively investing in Swift: new libraries are being released (Swift Testing, Swift Distributed Actors), and compatibility with C and C++ is improving. The Swift community is one of the fastest-growing on GitHub.
• Abandoning Legacy Code. Objective-C, in which older versions of applications are written, requires increasing effort to maintain. Swift code is easier to read, document, and hand over to new developers.

Case Studies: Who Has Already Switched and What They Gained

Uber — one of the most notable cases. The company rewrote key modules of its iOS application in Swift, resulting in a 25% reduction in launch time and a 15% decrease in memory consumption. Plans include a full migration of the remaining components by the end of 2026.

Google is migrating its macOS applications (Chrome, Google Drive, Gmail) to Swift. The reason is the need for native integration with new Apple APIs, including Metal and Core ML. Swift allows for more efficient use of MacBook resources on M-series chips.

Airbnb, after experiments with cross-platform development (React Native), returned to native development in Swift. According to the company's engineers, this resulted in a 40% performance increase in animations and scrolling.

What This Means for Developers

The trend of 2025 opens up new prospects for iOS/macOS developers. Knowledge of Swift is becoming not just an advantage, but a mandatory requirement for hiring at large companies. At the same time, demand is growing for specialists proficient in SwiftUI, Combine, and new frameworks for working with AI (Core ML, Create ML).

For those just entering the profession, Swift is one of the fastest paths to a job in big tech. And for experienced developers, now is the perfect time to delve deeper into the ecosystem: study Swift concurrency, async/await, and package development via Swift Package Manager.

Forecasts: What's Next

By 2026, it is expected that more than 70% of all new iOS/macOS applications will be written exclusively in Swift. Objective-C will finally move into the category of outdated technologies, supported only in legacy projects. Furthermore, Swift is actively penetrating server-side development (Vapor, Hummingbird) and even machine learning (Swift for TensorFlow).

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