NEW YORK -- The mobile market offers vast and varied opportunities for developers, with platforms such as Nokia's Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux-based technologies vying for developer mindshare.

However, as a group of leaders at a recent meeting of the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA) here said, developers are most likely to go to the platform that makes things efficient for them and where they can make the most money building applications. Right now, Symbian is the mobile market leader with the largest number of smart phones based on the SymbianOS, but as the market evolves, that could change.

"We want to enable developers to take what they know and build what they want," said Eric John, director of marketing for Forum Nokia, Nokia's global development community. "We're not talking about just the C++ and Java developers, but even Web designers and others who want to create applications to run on top of the Nokia handset."

John, who was part of a July 14 NYSIA panel entitled "Mobile -- The Opportunity for Developers and Business People," said the mobile space shows where the power of Web services and applications are merging. And Nokia is pushing three primary types of applications: Web applications, ad-enabled applications and location-based applications.

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