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Google Brings 34 Vendors To Phone Consortium |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Wednesday, 07 November 2007 |
In what is
undoubtedly the new direction for open source mobile phone systems,
Google has finally revealed how it plans to take part in the
development of mobile computing. The company, along with 34 industry
partners have announced a broad-ranging open platform alliance that
will leverage a new Linux-based operating system developed by Google.
Though
some big name brands like Apple iPhone, Nokia/Symbian and of course
Microsoft Windows are missing from the Linux initiative, Google has
bought together T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and others into the
Open Handset Alliance, a
multinational alliance of technology and mobile industry leaders that
are helping it on the
development of Android.
Android is a fully integrated mobile "software stack" that consists of an operating
system, middleware,
user-friendly interface and applications with the goal to make
everything faster and more cost effective for phone engineers to
developer phones and phone functionality.
None of this will bear
fruit until the middle of next year when the first phones based on the
Android platform are expected to begin appearing.
Bigger picture the
introduction of a broadly accepted, open sourced, mobile phone
operating system platform should act like a honey pot bringing in third
party applications developers who can enhance and extend the Android
phone's functionality without introducing interoperability issues.
"The end result
will be an unprecedented mobile platform that will enable wireless
operators and manufacturers to give their customers better, more
personal and more flexible mobile experiences," says Google.
Despite
all the rumour and speculation about the imminent release of the Google
Phone, the search and advertising company has been busily preparing a
developer kit and ecosystem around the Android platform and Open
Handset Alliance in an effort that is "more ambitious than any single
'Google Phone' that the press has been speculating about over the past
few weeks," said Google Chairman and CEO Eric
Schmidt.
"Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling
will power thousands of different phone models."
The first deliverable of the new program will be the release of an
early access software development kit to provide developers
with the tools necessary to applications for the platform. This will be
provided under what the company describes as a "progressive,
developer-friendly open-source" license
which gives developers freedoms, but which also commits them to an ananti-fragmentation clause.
Although
other mobile phone Linux operating systems efforts already exist in the
market, Google has said it chose to beat a new path because the others
were not completely open, or were not advanced enough to provide the
entire platform suite of software and tools required for it to gain
significant momentum.
The Android platform consists not only of the
Linux OS, but a series of other components for small screen graphics
optimisations, database, speech recognition,
videocodecs and so on.
Handset
makers and network operators will be able to offer phones based on
customised Android software reducing the time to market and development
costs.
Open Handset Alliance Founding Members
www.openhandsetalliance.com
Aplix (www.aplixcorp.com)
Ascender Corporation (www.ascendercorp.com)
Audience (www.audience.com)
Broadcom (www.broadcom.com)
China Mobile (www.chinamobile.com)
eBay (www.ebay.com)
Esmertec (www.esmertec.com)
Google (www.google.com)
HTC (www.htc.com)
Intel (www.intel.com)
KDDI (www.kddi.com)
LivingImage (www.livingimage.jp)
LG (www.lge.com)
Marvell (www.marvell.com)
Motorola (www.motorola.com)
NMS Communications (www.nmscommunications.com)
Noser (www.noser.com)
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (www.nttdocomo.com)
Nuance (www.nuance.com)
Nvidia (www.nvidia.com)
PacketVideo (www.packetvideo.com)
Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com)
Samsung (www.samsung.com)
SiRF (www.sirf.com)
SkyPop (www.skypop.com)
SONiVOX (www.sonivoxrocks.com)
Sprint Nextel (www.sprint.com)
Synaptics (www.synaptics.com)
TAT - The Astonishing Tribe (www.tat.se)
Telecom Italia (www.telecomitalia.com)
Telefónica (www.telefonica.es)
Texas Instruments (www.ti.com)
T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com)
Wind River (www.windriver.com)
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