The BlackBerry Partners Fund, the iFund and the Android Developer Challenge represent the industry’s shift from relying on operators for innovation to device manufactures

Software and Services for mobile devices and platforms has always been something that the mobile telecommunications industry championed, but the drum beat for change grows louder and louder as the units of time that pass between innovations and fads shrinks year after year. Consumers typically relied on operators to offer them new capabilities and functionalities for the handsets they’ve signed their soul over to own for the next 18 to 24 months, but things are definitely changing and the stench of fear is so powerful in the air that the sweet smell of victory is often locked away and kept in a vile for a select few to enjoy.

The BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Partners Fund, iFund and the Android Developer Challenge represent the new economy, the new stage of growth, that relies less on the people who built the pipes and more on the hardware and software that interact with the data that flows through them. With over a quarter of a billion dollars being poured into funding the future from these three campaigns alone, it is quite clear that the industry as a whole has given up on the companies that once held as much power as the priesthood did during the times of mass ignorance among the people.

A renaissance is approaching and it isn’t necessarily due to one thing, but the culmination of many things that have created a new fertile ground where anyone can plant their seed and harvest the bounty that awaits them. Smartphone sales are increasing at a frantic rate because they are the devices that best interact with the online world we’re used to using today. Data plans (tariffs as they’re called in the UK) are coming down in price, with North American operators already offering unlimited packages for reasonable prices, and European providers making their bits and bytes much more affordable today when compared with rates only 3 years ago. Mobile browsers seem to have matured over night to the everyday man who replaces his handset every 2+ years, but for everyone else the evolution in terms of how much of the internet we can view on our mobiles versus our home and work computers is quickly reaching closer and closer to par every 6 months.

Funding for developers to create services and applications for mobile is a relatively new concept. Operators used to create a business model and then build an application or service around it, while at the same time locking everyone out of the ecosystem. In the new world services are built for virality and terms like monetization are on the bottom of the todo list. This new way of thinking is not being fully embraced by the old rulers in their respective kingdoms, but more importantly it is causing the people to become accustomed to everything being free or supplemented by advertising. If something new and cool isn’t offered for nothing then someone will clone it and make it so. Experimentation among users will grow faster than the demand at which developers can create their applications and/or services, but the money will not start flowing as quickly as anyone hoped and panic will set in. What will the future look like when the company who makes your device and the operator you choose to use bear zero impact on the experiance you’ve become accustomed to using and have made personal over time?

I don’t have answers and can not accurately predict the future, but I just wanted to highlight the fact that the next few years in mobile are going to look radically different than the any time prior. That statement is a given, it can be said for any industry, but what makes this unique is the fact that the world is guaranteed to change when everyone starts carrying a device that can connect them with not only anyone, but anything in their environment and any piece of knowledge that has been created by our species since the first humans started telling their stories with paint in caves. The number of platforms will shrink, the number of runtime environments will decrease, but as long as the web continues to evolve, and people start opening their eyes and see the value created in accessing it anywhere and anytime, then we’re going to see a shift in the economy of power from the people who build the pipes that give you your bits and the people who make magic out of them.

[Photo from Flickr]