Google makes a habit of sending shockwaves through the tech world at regular intervals. The release of the Android Software Development Kit, the first effort of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, was no different for the mobile phone marketplace. The Alliance's ultimate goal: to reshape the cell phone universe as we know it.

While there will be no "Gphone," the idea is to crack open software development for mobile applications. Carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel are on board, and a big group of handset manufacturers including Motorola and Samsung promise to design phones and other gadgets that will run the software. Android is built on the open Linux Kernel and encompasses an operating system, middleware, and even some key mobile apps, says Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile platforms. The Alliance promises that "the platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications."

To get the ball rolling, the Open Handset Alliance announced the Android Developer Challenge. During 2008, a total of $10 million in prize money will be awarded to innovative developers. The Alliance suggests they concentrate on social networking, media consumption, collaboration, gaming, rethinking of traditional user interfaces, or "whatever you're excited about." The game is definitely on.

Will Android liberate mobile devices and spur innovation the way open source code helped the Web evolve so quickly? It's very likely, and Linux experts who want to take their careers in new directions should take note of this pivotal development. With almost 10 percent of all listings on Dice relating to Linux in one way or another, it's clear that Linux - and mobile Linux - are hotbeds of development action. As Bill Weinberg, a blogger at the Linux Foundation, said, "Microsoft spends huge amounts of time and energy Google-watching, and just as WindowsMobile is gaining momentum, Redmond's nemesis shows up in the phone market, too. Symbian has enjoyed new design wins and growing deployment of smartphone SymbianOS. However, analyst firms like Canalys and ABI Research show both Microsoft and Symbian growth faltering, and predict a three-horse race for smart and feature phones by the end of the decade, with Linux pulling ahead in following years."

Forrester analyst Charles Golvin agrees on the timing, saying the Linux impact will be big but that it will arrive "slowly."

With so much going on and so many platforms in the mix, the area should be of interest to software developers of every stripe. Points of entry abound, and it will be fascinating to see if the mobile market can flourish the same way the Web did once easy-to-master tools became prevalent, enabling the Web 2.0 boomlet we're currently enjoying.

OS Alternatives

Both Microsoft and Symbian are strong competitors in today's mobile application marketplace. Microsoft's Smartphone SDK - which lets programmers develop .NET applications for devices - is the most prevalent, and Microsoft is always eager to point out that it works with 160 wireless operators in 55 countries, as well as 44 device makers. Development jobs in the mobile Microsoft arena are certainly available. In fact, there are more than 600 Smartphone-related positions currently listed at Dice. Search and you'll find job titles such as Mobile Applications Developer, WinCE Engineer, and Windows Mobile GUI Developer.

As for Symbian, it's a partially open-source mobile application platform and OS owned by a consortium of handset makers, including Nokia. It's found its way onto a total of 165 million smartphones over the past eight years. Currently there are 134 Symbian smartphone models on the market, and about seven percent of all mobile phones shipped today are Symbian-based. The company claims 2.5 million developers are writing software for Symbian phones. (Dice has 91 Symbian-related positions currently listed.) Its programming environment has been described as a specialized breed of C++, but certain devices can also be programmed in OPL, Python, VBm, Simkin, Perl, Java ME and PersonalJava.  

The bottom line is mobile communications is a growth industry. Today's 3 billion mobile phone users outnumber both Internet users and land-line owners. That already huge number has nowhere to go but up. On top of that, each user will demand more from their phones as prices for phone-based Net access drop and data pipes from the Net to phones widen. The mobile landscape is going to change significantly over the next few years, and software developers are going to be the agents of that change.