You've probably heard that Apple scored a hit on Samsung, last week and won a round in their ongoing epic patent battle. As for developers working, on either side, I don't think they will be affected much. There are still huge ecosystems built around Samsung and Apple. Personally, I'm very happy with my Samsung phone. I know people who are very happy with their Apple products. Both are high quality and robust. Should developers be worried about their jobs? I don't think so. The smart-phone, tablet, and consumer electronics industries are evolving at breakneck speeds. Other factors, like the overall economy, federal regulations, and November's election results have a far larger effect on job growth, than this case. Samsung and Apple are both highly successful...and profitable companies. They introduce new products all the time and fight to keep out competitors. That’s the nature of the business, in my mind. And, yet, there are plenty of things that haven't been invented, or problems that haven't been solved. You may recall my recent blog post on “How Bad WiFi Connectivity Robs Us,” where I gave an account of using WiFi on my old HP iPaq PDA. The point of the story was that six years later, we still don't have entirely reliable always-on, everywhere connectivity. That is quite a bottleneck, particularly for cloud applications and real-time services. I think it’s slowing down the whole mobile movement. Persistent technical problems, like ubiquitous connectivity, are still with us. Come up with solutions to problems like that and you'll be successful – and have to hire your own patent attorneys.