| Google's phone plan finally revealed |
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| Written by Stephen Withers | |
| Tuesday, 06 November 2007 | |
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You'll even find eBay and speech recognition vendor Nuance on the roster, and all told there are 34 founding members. Clearly, this is a move that must be taken seriously. "Today's announcement 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 idea behind Android is to reduce the cost of mobile devices at the same time as speeding their development. It will comprise an operating system (a Linux distribution from Wind River, optimised for the handset hardware), middleware, user interface and applications, all offered under "one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products." The Alliance made no mention of device owners' freedom to modify the software, but we'll reserve judgement on that point until more detail emerge. The first Android-based phones are expected in the second half of 2008, but an 'early access' version of the Android development kit will be available next week so developers can get started on applications. One of the first devices is likely to come from HTC. "Our participation in the Open Handset Alliance and integration of the Android platform in the second half of 2008 enables us to expand our device portfolio into a new category of connected mobile phones that will change the complexion of the mobile industry and re-create user expectations of the mobile phone experience," said CEO Peter Chou. Even if the initial range of Android applications is limited, phone makers will be able to include Esmertec's Jbed Java virtual machine to handle Java ME software. As already mentioned, Nuance is part of the Open Handset Alliance. "By packaging and optimising 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," said Steve Chambers, president of the company's mobile and consumer services division. Android is said to be just the first step in the Alliance's plan to significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services.
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