Our colleagues Evert Woud, Robin Ryckmans, and Robby Smet recently joined ~2,000 developers at ICM München for KotlinConf 2026. Although icapps is already heavily focused on cross-platform and native development today, the barrier to adopting Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is rapidly lowering. At the same time, the ecosystem is accelerating along two axes: Compose-first Android/KMP maturity and AI-driven development.

The numbers & corporate adoption

  • Market Dominance: Kotlin is used in 92% of Play Store apps, and 86% of Android devs call it their primary language.

  • KMP Growth: The number of KMP apps in stores doubled over the past year, supported by 3,600+ ready-to-use libraries on klibs.io.

  • Enterprise Trust: Google Docs has been completely rewritten in KMP as part of a full Google Workspace migration, and Google Search is largely converted to Kotlin. Sony also demonstrated successful, phased KMP adoption in complex setups.

Tooling & performance gains

Kotlin 2.4 has officially gone stable, bringing core features like context parameters and explicit backing fields into production setups. The tooling updates focus heavily on optimizing performance and widening the ecosystem:

  • iOS & Build performance: Moving from Kotlin 2.2 to 2.4 yields a 25% reduction in build times and a 58% decrease in build RAM usage. Swift Export (now supporting suspend functions and Flows) and Swift Package Manager (SPM) integration have both successfully reached Alpha. Additionally, Liquid Glass UI-interop allows native components to blend seamlessly with Compose UI.

  • New Ecosystem tooling: A new uniform Kotlin CLI, a streamlined project structure for production applications, and an Alpha VS Code extension are expanding Kotlin's footprint far outside traditional IDE boundaries.

Android is officially "Compose-first"

Google has officially declared Android Compose-first, shifting traditional Views to maintenance mode. Writing a native app in Compose today ensures a much easier port to Compose Multiplatform (CMP) later since the UI layer is already portable. On the multiplatform side, Navigation 3 is now stable, CMP for Web is in Beta (with accessibility and HTML interop), and Hot Reload for Desktop is stable by default.

How the Ecosystem validates the icapps workflow

The announcements from KotlinConf '26 didn't catch us off guard; rather, they heavily validate our long-term roadmap and internal standards.

We were already compose-first

While the broader industry is currently adjusting to Google's massive push toward Jetpack Compose and KMP, Compose-first has been our internal standard for years. A prime example is our work for Bolero.

By minimizing our legacy XML footprint early on, our architecture is already optimized for modern development. For our partners, this mature foundation means any future transition to KMP or CMP will be significantly faster, cleaner, and more cost-effective. To capitalize on this, we are executing immediate action items to phase out our remaining legacy XML Views and test how Android’s new CLI can augment our automated testing.

Navigating the AI Shift: SDD and EDD

With JetBrains shaping future AI tooling via the open Agent Client Protocol (ACP), software engineering is actively shifting away from manual coding toward two new structural paradigms:

  • Spec-Driven Development (SDD): Writing highly precise technical specifications beforehand to act as a contract and regression check for AI agents.

  • Eval-Driven Development (EDD): Setting up rigorous evaluation guardrails (such as "AI as a judge") to actively combat hallucinations and context drift.

Moving forward, we will actively investigate how to integrate these key insights and guardrails into our own AI SDLC workflow to broaden its power even further.

While we are experimenting with the new Android CLI and Journeys to see how automated agents can safely speed up routine testing, we are balancing this with a healthy note of caution. Conference leaders highlighted critical industry nuances, including ethical concerns, potential senior burnout from a shrinking junior pipeline, and impending pricing "rugpulls" as VC-subsidized AI tools inevitably shift to heavy usage-based billing. Our focus remains on using AI to augment, not replace, our strict quality standards. 

The bottom line: What it means for you

  • For Mobile Developers: The shift is absolute. Android is officially Compose-first, and KMP is rapidly narrowing the iOS gap with 25% faster builds and smoother Swift integration.

  • For Tech Leads & CTOs: KMP is enterprise-proven. With Google migrating Workspace and Search to Kotlin, KMP has graduated from an experimental framework to a risk-reduced strategy for scalable architecture.

  • For icapps clients: While we work purely native today, we are closely monitoring these advancements. We stand ready to adopt KMP and Compose Multiplatform (CMP) the moment the timing is right for your business.