Mobile Talent in Short Supply as Employers Seek to Fill Jobs

Technology companies are running up against a dearth of qualified developers to create applications for mobile devices, according to a survey by online job board Dice Holdings Inc.

Almost 57 percent of employers and outside recruiters that hired for mobile-related jobs this year plan to boost such hires in the next 12 months, the survey, conducted on behalf of Bloomberg Businessweek.com, showed. More than half the respondents described the supply of quality mobile-software designers and engineers as “scarce.”

Companies need app developers as the market for mobile software surges to $17.5 billion by 2012, from $4.1 billion last year, according to a study by Chetan Sharma Consulting. The demand for programmers who can write for mobile platforms, such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Google Inc.’s Android and Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry, has stoked competition among recruiters, driven up salaries and led employers to consider getting new talent through acquisitions.

Small Rise

The online survey, conducted Oct. 11-15, was based on 283 recruiters who use New York-based Dice’s site and said they had hired mobile professionals this year. Dice sells services to businesses who recruit employees through its site.

More than a fifth of respondents said they hired substantially more mobile experts this year than last year, and more than a third said they added slightly more. Some 36 percent hired about the same number, while 6.6 percent said mobile hiring fell this year.

In the next 12 months, a fifth of recruiters anticipate a substantial increase in hiring, 37 percent see a slight increase, and 34 percent plan to hire about the same number.

The most common salary range for mobile engineers and designers was $75,001 to $100,000, according to 41 percent of respondents. About 28 percent said average pay was $100,001 to $125,000, while 21 percent said it was $50,001 to $75,000.

Higher Salaries

Almost a third of employers raised salary levels for the average mobile worker “higher than normal,” citing the increase in demand for talent.

Experience with Apple’s mobile platform carried the most weight on resumes, with 72 percent of recruiters saying they are hiring for development of iPhone applications, and 38 percent saying iPhone expertise is the most attractive among platforms.

“Anybody that has an application that has been working on a notebook now wants that to work on an iPad, an iPhone and on Google Android,” said Todd Thibodeaux, chief executive officer of the trade group Computing Technology Industry Association in Oak Brook, Illinois.

He described the supply of qualified talent as “scant.” “There’s a whole bunch of specialties that have to develop and emerge there,” Thibodeaux said.

Android Software

About 60 percent are hiring for Android development, and 23 percent said new recruits with knowledge of Google’s platform is most highly prized. Some 48 percent of employers are hiring for BlackBerry, while just 16.1 percent said that’s the most desirable type of mobile expertise.

This month, Dice’s site had 758 job listings requiring skills or experience with the iPhone, up from 264 a year ago. The site had 685 listings requiring Android skills, up from 158.

“If you look at jobs that require either iPhone skills or Android skills, the number of jobs is still pretty small, but if you look at the growth rate, it’s huge,” said Tom Silver, senior vice president at Dice.

Mobile was described as one of the top three priorities in technology hiring by 35 percent of employers. A year from now, as more businesses incorporate mobile technology, Silver predicts that number will be closer to 50 percent.

The vast majority of employers, or 95 percent, said mobile hiring was either competitive or extremely competitive.

Overseas Demand 

That competition has intensified partly because of increased demand for talent in other countries, especially India and China, said Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a San Jose, California-based group formed by business leaders to focus on talent-pool concerns in the region.

While programmers and other skilled workers from India and China have had a significant presence in technology companies during the Internet boom, “in the past decade, that has tailed off significantly,” Hancock said.

Some businesses are resorting to acquisitions. About half of the respondents plan to add mobile-software expertise by buying companies in the next 12 months.

Other companies have learned to be more flexible in their hiring. Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and CEO of local-business reviews site Yelp Inc., said he began recruiting engineers talented enough to learn and adjust to new types of mobile platforms.

“If you’re doing searches for people with iPhone experience, it isn’t going to be a deep pool of people,” Stoppelman said. “We just look for good engineers.”

Build Once, Deploy to Many

The mobile content applications sector presents entrepreneurs with an ever-widening target for fresh ideas. They need only to overcome the fragmented technology nature of the mobile industry itself.

Devices such as the iPhone and the Droid have redefined mobile phone capabilities, but device formats and software operating systems and carrier delivery platforms are silos within silos, each requiring a single, usually small, usually cost-challenged application developer to reinvent the wheel every time it tries to land its app on a new device.

For as many mobile phone manufacturers and carriers are out there, each has its own app store, chock full of ring tones, games and other productivity killers or enhancers (depending on the app).

The cost and labor required to create apps again and again for different phones likely has kept some developers out of the game. The Wholesale Applications Community is trying to open the gates for entrepreneurs flummoxed about how to achieve mass-market scalability.

At this year’s Mobile World Congress, a global alliance called the Wholesale Applications Community is banding together to create an open standard that developers can use to create applications that are device- and carrier-agnostic. According to the community’s Web site, the group aims to establish a simple route to market for developers and provide them with access to a customer base of more than 3 billion people.

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), which consists of 24 of the largest worldwide mobile operators and whose goal is to build a standards-based approach to mobile software development and deployment, said it expects to have that platform readied in time for next February’s Mobile World Congress (MWC).

Already, leading carriers worldwide have jumped on the community bandwagon, including U.S. carriers AT&T, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. Handset manufacturers including Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG have also signed up. The group invites all ICT (information and communication technology) vendors to join, including operators and developers, handset manufacturers and Internet players. Only through cooperation, the community said, will the group succeed in creating “an initiative based on openness and transparency."

“We believe this model presents the most compelling format on the market where developers will thrive and customers will reap the benefits of greater choice,” the group noted on its site.

Such a step is a long time coming in the mobility space. For too long, developers have been hamstrung by the proprietary app dev requirements of individual carriers and handset manufacturers.

Apple proved that mobile app development can be highly lucrative. Imagine how much more lucrative those same apps could be if they were available to any mobile device, from iPods to Blackberrys. If the community is successful, it would be only a matter of time.

Apple hit upon a winner with its app store, and mobile carriers have never been known for their brotherly love toward one another (AT&T and Verizon are the latest to demonstrate this with their series of “you lie” commercials), so Apple may be smart to steer clear.

It will be something short of a miracle if the Wholesale Applications Community succeeds in its endeavor. The concept of “write once, run anywhere” is a compelling one, but it’s one that’s never come close to being realized in mobile. And thanks to the proliferation of new smartphone operating systems and an ever-increasing number of superphones on the market, there’s no chance the WAC will be able to change that. In the meantime, things could get interesting.

Entrepreneurship's 10 Commandments

The following is a summary of Guy Kawasaki's "Ten Commandments":

1. Make meaning, not money. "As venture capitalists," Kawasaki said, "we deal with many companies, and often they come in saying what they think we want to hear: that they want to make money. It's been my observation that most companies founded on this concept of making money pretty much fail. They attract the wrong kind of co-founders and early employees."

Rather, he says, entrepreneurs should focus on making their product or service mean something beyond the sum of its components--and the money may very well follow. He noted how Nike made its aerobic sneakers for women into more than just "two pieces of cotton, leather and rubber, manufactured under somewhat suspect conditions in the Far East." With smart advertising about how women traditionally have been measured and judged, Nike "turned $2.50 of raw materials into something that stands for efficacy and power and liberation. They are making meaning with shoes. Great companies make meaning." Certainly, Apple has done that with the Mac, iPhone and other devices.

2. Make a mantra, not a mission statement. Bland, generic company mission statements--about "delivering superior-quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership innovation and partnerships"--serve no one but the consultant brought in to develop them, Kawasaki said.

Instead, keep it short and define yourself by what you want to mean to consumers. Nike stands for "authentic athletic performance." FedEx is about "peace of mind." To get everyone internally and externally on the same page, explain why your organization exists and how it meets customers' needs and desires.

3. Jump curves. Innovating is harder than just staying a little bit ahead of competitors on the same curve. "If you're a daisy-wheel printer company, the goal is not to introduce Helvetica in another point size. The goal is to jump to laser printer," he said. That's easier in some businesses than others. Kawasaki noted how in the days before refrigeration, the ice industry consisted of ice harvesters in cold climates using horses, sleighs and saws to collect ice outdoors during winter months. Ten million pounds of ice were shipped in 1900 that way, he said. Then came "Ice 2.0"--factories that could freeze ice anywhere and an ice man who would deliver it to establishments and homes. Finally came "Ice 3.0": home refrigerators.

Of course, none of the ice harvesters got into the ice factory business, and none of the factories got into the refrigerator business. That's because "most organizations define themselves in terms of what they do," he said, "instead of thinking 'what benefit do we provide the customer?' True innovation comes when you jump curves, not when you duke it out for 10% or 15% better."

4. In product design, "roll the DICEE".That's an acronym. "D" is for deep, which to Kawasaki means thinking about features that go beyond the norm. One of his favorite "deep" ideas: Fanning Reef sandals, which have a bottle opener built into the sole. "I" is for intelligence, as seen in the design of Panasonic's BF-104 flashlight, which uses batteries of three different sizes to accommodate the random mix of extra batteries many people have around the house. "C" is for complete--or being not just a product, but including support and service. The first "E" is for elegance: Beauty matters, according to Kawasaki. "Companies should have CTOs--chief taste officers," he said. The second "E" is for emotive. "Great products generate strong emotions: Think Harley Davidson, Macintosh."

5. Don't worry, be "crappy". This doesn't mean ship a bad product, but "your innovation can have elements of crappiness to it," Kawasaki said. Twitter has a litany of flaws, but it is changing people's habits. The first Mac had plenty of room for improvement, but it made a statement about the future of personal computing, and it did not need to wait.

6. Polarize people. Try to be all things to all people and you often ship mediocrity, Kawasaki said. The boxy Toyota Scion xB looks ugly to some people but very cool to its devotees. TiVo became popular while maddening the advertising industry.

7. Let 100 flowers blossom. Borrowing from Chairman Mao, Kawasaki said you never know where the flowers will emerge, so let them grow. Innovations may attract unexpected and unintended customers. Think of Avon Products' Skin-so-Soft cream, which became popular as a mosquito repellent. Rule one, he said, is "take the money. Rule two: Learn who's buying your product, ask them why and give them more reasons. That's a lot easier than asking people who aren't interested 'why not,' and trying to change their minds."

8. Churn, baby, churn. Always improve. Listen to customers for ideas. That's difficult, Kawasaki said, because an innovator or entrepreneur must often ignore the advice of naysayers and "bozos" who say it can't be done. Once it is done, and the product reaches the hands of customers, it's time to start listening to their feedback. "Once you ship, then you flip," Kawasaki said.

9. Niche yourself. Find your place, Kawasaki urged. He showed a simple X-Y graph, with the usual four quadrants mapping the variables "Uniqueness" and "Value." A product or service does not need to be unique if it delivers value. That, he said, is how Dell won market share selling computers. In the lower left quadrant of his X-Y graph he placed many of the "me too" dot-com companies of the late 1990s that were low value and uninspired. But in the upper-right quadrant were high value, unique products and services. They included the online movie-ticketing service Fandango and the Clear card that can speed passage through airport security. "The upper-right-hand corner is the holy grail of marketing," he said. "It's where meaning is made, it's where money is made, it's where history is made."

10. Follow the 10-20-30 rule when pitching to venture capitalists. That means no more than 10 PowerPoint slides, a limit of 20 minutes for the pitch and using a 30-point font size in the presentation (to keep it simple). The goal of such pitches isn't to walk home with a check, he said, it's to "not be eliminated" from consideration.

Kawasaki added one bonus point for innovators--and a mea culpa. "Don't let the bozos get you down," he said, trotting out some well-worn statements from technology naysayers, such as IBM chairman Thomas Watson's assertion in 1943 that the total worldwide market for computers was "maybe five" (computer historians question the authenticity of the unsubstantiated quote), and Western Union's inability to see a use for the telephone.

These companies were trapped by thinking about what they already did, rather than what could be done next. Ignore them, Kawasaki said. Nevertheless, he admitted he was a "bozo" himself once. In the mid-1990s, he was offered a chance to interview for the CEO position at Yahoo. He declined. He saw the Web as just another thing to do with a computer modem, and a Web index as having limited value. "By my calculation, this decision cost me $2 billion."

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Java App Store

Sun Microsystems used its JavaOne tech conference in San Francisco to publicly launch the Java Store, a new offering for consumers looking to easily purchase Java and JavaFX mobile applications.

The Java Store's web site, available at http://store.java.com, is currently in beta mode, though will officially open to U.S. internet users sometime in 2009. Sun is now inviting developers to submit their JavaFX and Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) programs to the Java Warehouse for consideration in the store.

As Oracle inches towards officially buying out Sun, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made an appearance at JavaOne, promising to help increase Java use by computer users across the world.

Kickstarted by Apple with its App Store, an increasing number of companies are creating app stores targeting consumers. Apple has an established store, Sun's store is currently in beta, and companies such as Nokia plan to sell apps directly to consumers.

Google forays Into The ebook Biz

Google has indicated its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google, according to a recent article in the New York Times.

The move pits Google against Amazon, which looks to control the e-book market in a very Apple-like way with its Kindle offerings and e-book sale pipeline to them.

Since many ebooks are found from a Google search in the first place there is a binding logic to seeing Google skip the middle man and enter the ebook business themselves.

What’s going to be really interesting I suspect, is to see how well this does against the Amazon Kindle crowd. That ought to be really interesting. Because it will mean Google having to tread onto Amazon’s home turf, I bet that Amazon is not going to take this lying down.

Amazon versus Google

If Amazon have made a false move with the Kindle, who benefits? One beneficiary is surely going to be Apple. The iPhone and the iTouch are already very text capable and they will only get more so as Apple extends the touchscreen interface to larger systems. But the other big gainer, in the long-term, perhaps the biggest beneficiary, is going to be Google. Google with its Book Search program and its alliances with publishers and libraries is going to occupy the place that would otherwise appear to be Amazon's of becoming our preferred source of access to published literature. Amazon seems to have taken a wrong turn in supposing that distribution, rather than access and search, is the key challenge for digital print.

Google and Apple, between them already have the solution for eBooks (and its not a download solution). Read and search on your iPhone and access via a web browser, anything in print can be handled that way. More to the point: everything in print can be handled that way. Everything will be searched via the web, everything will be accessed via the web. Downloads are pretty much of an irrelevance. The question is: what do authors and publishers plan to do about that?

Answer: "Maybe the publishers should themselves try selling/granting access direct". Aside from Google with its Book Search, the publishers are the other variable in the market-place which has a promising opportunity if the Amazon Kindle download system bombs. After all, scientific and technical publishers have made a reasonable fist of creating a digital market for their STM periodicals. Book publishers need to create access opportunities and figure out how to sell digitally direct.

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