The month followed with plenty of discussion of another "O"for Open with Google's Android OS, Verizon's Open development initiative, and Canada's announcement about opening up next year's spectrum bid to new entrants (I have no faith that that will lower my mobile phone bill).  At first glance these seem great, but dig a little deeper and it is still just surface dressing on the issues faced by developers in getting their technologies and products to market faster and for less cost; ah and then to actually make money and become a sustainable company.  For most developers, Openness just leads to additional fragmentation which means more phones to address, more APIs to download, more configurations to learn - which costs them more time and money.  

These Open initiatives also assume that all developers have the same issues - well they don't.  We've witnessed recently that the many faces of developers are different including the classic mobile developer, the Enterprise developer, the new media content developer and the plain old software app developer.  I'd like to see the industry place more focus on more collaborations and partnerships.  Yes - the big companies want to be competitive; but if they do so at the sake of the small developers, we all lose when it comes to innovation. 

We have already collected a few  great ideas in this regard so we can initiate some action.  If you have your own great idea that will help developers or are interested in being part of our Group of Developers Advisory Team let me know.

All the best for a safe, relaxing and joyous holiday season!