Google Android prototypes are out

android_hand No the search king isn’t going Terminator on us.

Google, however, and its partners are taking on Verizon Wireless and other lumbering giants in the cell phone  service provider fields with its Android operating system.

Google has lined up about 30 phone, chip and software companies to help develop Android systems under something called the Open Handset Alliance.

This also puts Google into competition with Nokia, RIM, Microsoft and a host of other manufacturing giants in the smartphone market though no products have been released.

Google, with partners Texas Instruments and Qualcomm Inc., showed off prototypes of the first phones to be released at some point later this year at the World Mobile Congress, the largest mobile phone show in the world (and something I hope to attend at some point in the future) earlier this week.

If you’re slow like me, you may have missed the news from the show, which is being held in Barcelona, Spain.

Apparently the prototypes were well received by show goers - then again these are people who I’ll politely call “early adopters.”

There are a number of benefits to the Google cell phone strategy. For manufacturer partners, Android will apparently cut development time to six or seven months from the current 18-month period so its manufacturer partners will be able to push Google-powered phones to market relatively quickly.

The other benefit is apparently the design. Android-equipped smart phone users will also apparently be able to navigate the Web by running a finger over the display — and how they’ll find full-size pages, not a Web resized for mobile devices’ small screens.

Don’t expect to see too many Canadians walking down the street with the Android operating system running a phone anytime soon for a number of reasons.

1) Android-based smart phones won’t be released until the second half of this year.

2) Smart phones represent only about 10% of cell phone shipments. Even if that goes up to 20% or so by 2010 as expected, the phones will be rolled out on smaller networks worldwide, none of which are Canadian.

3) It is Linux-based, which doesn’t fly here in Canada. At least not in cell phone land.

4) Google’s Open Handset Alliance, formed to generate support for Android, consists of smaller handset makers, such as Motorola, that are struggling against market leaders such as Nokia.

That is all.

February 13, 2008 | Filed Under News Items and Commentary 

Comments

Leave a Reply