MoFirst Solutions programmers work in Mumbai, India, developing software and apps for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system. Indian programmers are as capable of creating software as their American counterparts — at a fraction of the cost.

MUMBAI, India — Between piles of trash and stray dogs near a Mumbai slum is the entrance to MoFirst Solutions, where two dozen workers sit shoulder-to-shoulder with no air conditioning and write code for iPhone apps on laptops.

“The rates Indian developers charge are very low,” said Akash Dongre, chief operating officer at MoFirst Solutions, where clients pay as little as $15 an hour for a programmer.

MoFirst is tapping India’s next wave in outsourcing, with thousands of programmers that charge a fraction of Silicon Valley prices to capitalize on demand for programs for Apple’s iPhone and devices running Google’s Android software. Developers-for-hire for mobile applications may generate $5.6 billion in revenue by 2015, a 14-fold jump from this year, Forrester Research estimates.

“India is a logical place to do it for the same reason the software and services model has worked here: lower cost,” said Anshul Gupta, an analyst at research firm Gartner in Mumbai.

Applications on Apple’s online store have been downloaded more than 15 billion times since its opening in 2008 — with the Cupertino, Calif.-based company getting a 30 percent cut on each sale — as the surge of iPhone sales spawned demand for games and applications.

“It’s not about the device — that’s not what makes sales happen — it’s about the ecosystem,” said Gupta. “You need to have applications.”

Companies or individuals seeking to hire can turn to sites such as Elance Inc.’s service, where companies such as MoFirst will bid to win app-development projects lasting from a couple of weeks to several months.

India is the world’s largest recipient of outsourcing orders, according to Elance, whose website recently showed more than 450,000 professionals offering their services.

Rising demand for programmers

Requests for programmers who write code for Apple’s iOS platform rose 20 percent in the second quarter, according to Mountain View, Calif.-based Elance. Demand for programmers with Android skills rose by 15 percent, while developer requests for Research In Motion’s Blackberry devices increased by 3 percent, according to the company.

“The iPhone stuff is very, very hot,” said Ajai Shankar, who spent 12 years in the United States as a software writer and moved back to India this year to embrace the app-outsourcing boom. “The struggle people have nowadays, is that once you’ve developed an application for iPhone, the next thing you know is you have to do the same for Android.”

Indian developers may have the edge in pricing. MoFirst bills clients in the U.S., Britain and the Middle East $15 to $20 an hour, compared with the $50 to $100 charged by developers in the U.S., said Dongre, who has a mechanical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

While IT services still dominate the nation’s technology industry, the rise of mobile-app developers signals Indian technology companies may be evolving, Gartner’s Gupta said. That’s what developers such as Dongre may be counting on.

“Change is happening very fast in India,” said MoFirst’s Dongre. “People are starting to think more about developing products.”