We had an internal R&D day last Friday (look for the blog post/video on that later today or tomorrow) and one thing was very clear to me: The future is in mobile. Many of our developers took the day to play with CSS and other means that allow you to resize content based on mobile resolutions from the iPad down to the smallest smart phones. And that highlights one of the concerns for developers - there is no mobile standard.

Web development is hard enough with broswers like Internet Explorer 6 still lingering out there, though browsers are getting better at standards support. Mobile, on the other hand, is still the wild west in many regards. You can no longer get away with a plain text site for not-so-smartphones. Android has made it so you can't just design for the iPhone's iOS either. So what does the future look like? Enter market research firm IDC. They published a very interesting study looking at where things are now and where they're going to be in a few years. A full write-up is on Mashable's site. The study itself is over at IDC, who is responsible for the graphic below:

There are some interesting things on there, but none more than the predicted growth of the Windows Phone 7 operating system. Blackberry sees a minor dip, as does Apple's iOS. Android continues to grow, albiet much slower. And apparently Symbian goes the way of the old brick-style carphone.

What do you think? Can WP7 really make up that much ground? Will thier simpler, more user-friendly ad approach help them outpace Android's high-tech, youth-targeted positioning? At least one thing is clear...there won't be a standard anytime soon for us developers!