No, Google didn’t develop a phone, instead they started the Open Handset Alliance which is a group of over 30 companies who are coming “together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience” –Open Handset Alliance.
The companies have together developed “the first complete, open, and free mobile platform,” Android. They say that they are committed to commercially deploying handsets and services using the Android Platform sometime in the second half of 2008. An early look at the SDK will be available on November 12th.
Android is described as “a fully integrated mobil software stack that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications.”Handset makers will be able to customize the platform as they see fit and the “developer-friendly open source licenses” will make it easy for developers to make great applications for the platform. It seems to be similar to Google’s OpenSocial which allows developers to make applications for many different web sites while only writting the code once, but does that mean that Android will be able to run on many different kinds of handsets? Or will it only be able to run on specific hardware? The questions will hopefully be answered soon but I guess we’ll all have to wait until the early SDK comes out when we will get some more answers.
I just have one question about this… How do the guys from OpenMoko feel about this?
“Nuance joined the Open Handset Alliance with other industry leaders to grow the entire mobile ecosystem,” said Steve Chambers, president, mobile and consumer services division, Nuance Communications. “We’re committed to apply our strength and leadership in voice-based search and messaging to move the market forward. By packaging and optimizing embedded speech technology components for open source distribution, we’ve given developers the opportunity to access speech solutions through open APIs using the Android platform and to easily upgrade to new, more advanced speech features as well. We believe deep collaboration with members of the Alliance will grow our core mobile business and fuel the proliferation of speech-enabled applications worldwide.”