The telco ecosystem is finally waking up to Microsoft’s great epiphany of the 80’s and 90’s: it’s all about developers.

I was reminded of this when one of my high school alums Tweetered me about Motorola buying 280 North, makes of Cappuciono, an Object-C inspired app framework.

While I can’t say I’ve really every heard of anyone wanting to do more Object-C (like) coding, it highlights the fire under the collective back-sides of handset makers, carriers, and others in the telco space who’re seeing the developer ecosystems around Apple and Android disrupting their billion dollar revenue streams.

“…well I am now!”

Every technology need a parade of “killer features” to drive customers and for decades voice is what telcos offered. Remember all the “you can hear a pin drop” ads? While I might yell out “Bula Vinaka, Beachside!” each time AT&T drops my iPhone call, voice isn’t much of a killer feature anymore. There’s texting, of course, which while heavily used, is quickly becoming another undifferentiated feature (read: difficult to make easy money from in the face of cut-throat pricing from competition).

The App Economy

“Apps” are where it’s at now. Thanks to several years of advertising from Apple around the iPhone and the follow-on of Android, consumers are expecting their cellphones to be small computers. Just as with traditional computers, the availability of applications – killer apps – drives interest and buying behavior of the platform, here, various “smart phones” – soon just be “phones.”

Little wonder, then, that you’d see people like Motorola buying their way into application development. There’s a long way to go to build up a healthy and effective developer relations program, but having the actual technology – along with the talent and brand – is the necessary start. The existing cultures are a tremendous hurdle – the corporate structures are not really built around the slippery-slidey world of software and existing revenues are so stupidly massive that it’s easy to have a “what, me worry?” mentality.

Telco arms-dealers like Alcatel-Lucent are working on their own platform, and I’d expect to see more telco ecosystem folks – handset manufactures, telcos, equipment vendors, etc. – try to buy their way into, well, software.

Disclosure: Alcatel-Lucent is a client.