Most mobile dev work is done by individuals/small groups and each app is in itself a short life product for most and that's the key aspects as those factors ma

Most mobile dev work is done by individuals/small groups and each app is in itself a short life product for most and that's the key aspects as those factors make cutting edge gains/risk balance more towards gains. Why, the exposure is limited to the individual app and smaller/more dynamic ability numbers allow such things. But for your share listed companies, such things tend to be less so and even with tech companies - the only new tech they tend to embrace is tech they developed. So there are avenues to learn the latest and greatest, but always keep that risk balanced with gains. Now even in large businesses - new tech can and does get looked at, but even then, it will be cases of new projects and area's in which there is no alternative tech. So there will always be niches, take FPGA's and bank share trading. But in a World that still has COBOL, C and lesser ancients though still older than many of the coders that use them - Java. Not everything changes overnight. I remember the early days of Java and lots of people jumped on it, it had pedigree and at a time in which Sun was king of the internet roust. I recall seeing many a fine demo, then checked that they also had cutting edge hardware and was still, not near fluid - let alone upon the rolled out desktops. So yes, cutting edge software can often demand cutting edge hardware just to get the same results. Things improved in software (java performance) and hardware and that fine balance came about. Computer languages are brands in many ways, that level of trust and understanding takes time to come about. [EDIT ADD] Sorry I tangented but another important aspect is tooling - that is one area in which you may find cutting edge or less legacy come into play, though there will always be a robust content delivery and auditing system in place and that will be a wall for many things.