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Google's Android mobile OS announced

PushL | 05 November, 2007 19:57

At this pace, mobile application development is probably bound to become one of the most fragmented software activities.

Today Google announced Android, "the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.", following the (quiet) acquisition of the company ( http://www.android.com ) two years ago.

Besides Google's name (as if that weren't enough), 34 other companies (forming the Open Handset Alliance) are involved in the platform: T-Mobile, HTC, Motorola and Qualcomm, just to name a few.

Besides the initial buzz, this will probably bring some interesting news in the next few weeks.

More info:

http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/android_overview.html 

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Comments

Can hardly wait

tote_b5 | 05/11/2007, 21:45

We'll see how big the threat is for us. As an end-user, I can hardly wait to take it into use. However, as a developer, I feel threatened by the new rival platform ... looking forward to the challange. :)

Re: Google's Android mobile OS announced

antonypr | 05/11/2007, 22:08

antonypr

I'm wondering why Nokia didn't join this alliance. It might be that Nokia has maemo, which is based on Linux.

It would be interested to see the future of maemo because Android is backed up by a big guy (= Google).

Its an open platform

kumar | 06/11/2007, 06:52

With the introduction of Symbian 9.1 platform security many freelance developer out there felt deeply hurt and vulnerable. Well on the name of platform security a closed system was deviced to weed out small companies and developers for the mobile arena. Well google has given an strong answer to this, finally we will be having a completly new and open platform that wouldnt diffrentiate between core apps and 'third party apps'. That completly orthogonal to philosophy of nokia i.e make money. PS: I am dumping my ASD examination schedule and head for android.

How open is open?

Mark Wilcox | 06/11/2007, 16:51

Symbian is an open platform. S60 makes a big deal of being "open to new features". However, they aren't open source. Does that matter if you can create compelling applications for them? For the application developer having an open source platform only really makes it easier to track down the occasional bug. Of course you also have the ultimate documentation where you're not sure - the platform code! The proliferation of mobile Linux platforms all vary in their open source credentials though. The only one I've seen that is really open is OpenMoko. Maemo is close and getting closer to being completely open but some developers complain bitterly about the bits that remain closed. The LiMo foundation don't have any particular stance on openness yet as far as I can see. I suspect there will be plenty of closed stuff in there though. Now for this new Android entry... it seems they are deliberately choosing to license the platform code on an Apache license that has no copyleft and allows all sorts of proprietary modifications and extensions. The other advantage Linux has in the desktop space is that it is free whereas Microsoft is expensive. Linux may be free for mobiles too but Symbian is really cheap (<$5 per handset) and even with S60 or UIQ on top the software platform is a small part of the total handset cost. I think it would be best to wait and see what happens with all these different Linux variants and the market share they manage to gain before applications developers decide to jump ship. Better just to look at the competing SDKs and try to make sure your apps will be portable I'd suggest.

Re: Google's Android mobile OS announced

PushL | 06/11/2007, 19:09

Antony, It seems evident that this platform intends to compete directly against Nokia, Microsoft and Apple. As you say, it will also be interesting to see what will happen to the other Linux based platforms, like maemo, OpenMoko, LiMo, etc.

How open is open?

PushL | 06/11/2007, 19:20

Mark, A very good outline. As you say, the sdk publication next week will probably shed light on many of these issues. Gabor, As a developer, I just hope to have a minimal POSIX environment to be able to work with :)

Nice idea, heard it before somewhere?

Simon | 06/11/2007, 23:15

How many attempts at an open platform are really needed - this isn't the real problem. Arguably, Sun has the most coverage with it's platform - in theory this can run on any phone OS - but the reality is that it itself is fragmented. I hope that the Google attempt has learned the lessons - but somehow I doubt it.

Digital certificates

Eric Donovan | 16/11/2007, 22:51

I wouldn't bet on it being too open. Once the networks/operators/carriers get their hands on it, there's plenty that the they can do to restrict the small developer - at least for consumer applications where you need to work with the phone as set up when bought from a store. If you look at the security model, the operators will still be able to specify which digital certificates you'll need to access certain APIs.
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