[wsfii-discuss] The FOSS "GPhone"

[Vickram Crishna]

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/180294221/

Carefully orchestrated announcements for broad, sweeping initiatives like the one staged by Google today
don't always do a great job of diving straight into the meat and
telling it like it is, so we thought we'd boil down the Android and
Open Handset Alliance sitch as best we could into a tight, easy to
digest series of bullets. If this list is still wider than your
attention span, though, just know this: you can pick up your
Google-powered phone in the latter half of 2008.


At its core, Android forms the basis for Google's
operating system and supporting software for phones. In Google's own
words, it's a software stack.Two separate but related
entities form the basis for today's announcement: the Linux-based
Android mobile platform (a result of Google's 2005 acquisition of a
start-up of the same name) and the Open Handset Alliance, a 33-strong
group of device manufacturers, component manufacturers, software
companies, and carriers that have committed to working with Android.There
is no cut and dried "Gphone" and Google doesn't intend (or at least it
hasn't indicated an intent) to enter the hardware business. Instead,
it'll leave that to established players like HTC, LG, and Samsung --
and theoretically, anyone else that wants to have a go at it since the
Android platform and its code base is wide open.Unlike
the platform itself, there's no guarantee that devices based on the
Android platform will be open to third party developers. Google says
that'll be left to manufacturers and carriers to be decide, although it
doubts they'll choose to lock them down (hmm, has Google ever worked
with a carrier before?)Nokia, Apple (on whose board Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits), Palm, and Microsoft are notably absent from the alliance. Palm has come out today to announce that it intends to continue to integrate Google services into its future products.Carriers
currently in the alliance include China Mobile, KDDI, NTT DoCoMo,
Sprint Nextel, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, and T-Mobile. T-Mobile and
Sprint Nextel are the two national US carriers that are signed up;
AT&T and Verizon are not.The first Android-powered
devices are expected in the second half of 2008. Rumor has it that
Google has been using an HTC-sourced device, the "Dream,"
to demonstrate Android to potential partners. HTC may launch a version
of the Dream as one of its first handsets to use the platform. 
Vickram
http://communicall.wordpress.com
http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com




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