Mobile apps and the cloud are going all the way to the altar together. They've been in a relationship for several years and are now inseparable.

True love can be hard to explain, but in this case the relationship is based on pragmatism. More and more people are buying, using and relying on smartphones in their everyday lives. Much of that use and reliance revolves around mobile apps. The more mobile apps people use, the more data their phones consume and the more space they need to store all that information. Enter the cloud.

Just how ubiquitous are smartphones becoming? More than a billion such devices will be sold in the year 2014, according to a Credit Suisse estimate. By the same year, the market for cloud-based mobile apps will have increased by 90% compared to 2009. By 2016, analysts predict there will be 10 billion connected mobile devices in use globally, and smartphone traffic will be 50 times what it is today.

Many of your favorite apps are cloud-based now — Instagram, Pinterest, Foursquare, Yelp, Groupon and LinkedIn, just to name a handful.

Apps are moving to cloud for three primary reasons, according to a survey of IT executives: accessibility to data from multiple devices, lower cost and increased speed for businesses.

And increased consumption is disrupting hiring patterns. By 2015, development projects centered around mobile apps are projected to outnumber PC-based projects by four to one. From 2010 to 2011, the IT job site Dice.com reported a 220% increase in job postings for iPhone-related developer positions and a 302% increase in postings for Android developers. Jobs site Elance.com, meanwhile, reported a 100% increase in overall mobile app developer postings.

The platform-as-a-service company Engine Yard recently pulled all these stats and more together to create the infographic below. Check it out for a deeper dive and let us know what you think in the comments.