The nominations for 2011 Develop Industry Excellence Awards act as the perfect illustration as to the momentum mobile development has gained over the course of the last year.

In total, 19 developers or tools providers will a mobile focus have picked up nominations across categories.

Unsurprisingly, Angry Birds studio Rovio leads the line with three; best use of a licence or IP for Angry Birds Rio, and best handheld and independent studio for Rovio, though mobile developers across the board have cause to celebrate.

Roll of honour

NaturalMotion, which serves up the Morpheme 3 animation engine as well as its BackBreaker Football franchise on iOS, also has three nominations, up for best handheld studio, best tools provider and best use of a licence or IP for Jenga.

Other mobile studios making their mark include Digital Goldfish, Mobile Pie, Future Games of London, Travellers' Tales, Revolution Studios, Sumo Digital, Rodeo Games, Exient, Ideaworks Game Studios, PopCap's smartphone-focused Dublin studio, Erik Svedang, Tiny Wings creator Andreas Illiger and Somethin' Else, the studio behind audio iOS release Papa Sangre.

Mobile engines and middleware also make an appearance in 2011 Develop Awards' line-up, with Havok Mobile, Stonetrip's ShiVa3D engine, Unity and Trinigy's Vision Game Engine all up for accolades.

The event is due to take place on July 20, in the Hilton Metropole Hotel, Brighton.

Full studio nominations can be found here, with technology and service finalists listed here.