There is No GPhone, There Is Android Mobile OS
After months if not years of speculation, Google announced today that they are not in fact developing a single phone, but rather an ostensibly open-source mobile operating system called Android. Google stock prices jumped from $710 per share to $730 per share this morning on the news.
For all the "wow" everyone was hoping for from a GPhone, this is probably a much smarter move. Just as all non-dominant players in the social networking market have to give some thought to teaming up under the Google-led OpenSocial, so too will all mobile manufacturers likely think hard about leveraging the Google-led Android in the face of the iPhone's threat to remake their industry. Google won't be able to match Apple's eye-candy, but they may be able to offer far more utility in a mobile OS that's still far more pleasing to use than almost anything else on the market today.
Android was developed in co-ordination with the 30 members of the Open Handset Alliance. Participating vendors include Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile; but not AT&T and Verizon.
Android will be available for any phone manufacturer to install and build on top of. It will allow for extensive use of Google applications, mashups based on those applications combined with third party apps and will in time live on portable devices other than phones, like car navigation systems.
Google says that some of the partner companies are aiming for a late 2008 release of Android enabled phones. The developers' SDK will be available in about a week. The OS is based on Linux and Java.
The New York Times was briefed extensively before today's announcement and the Official Google Blog's announcement is here.
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"Participating handset makers today include Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile but not AT&T and Verizon."
That's because AT&T and Verizon don't make handsets.
Thanks Mykel.
This means that the same thing that happened to the PC platform will now go on the Mobile Devices, also for once the Mobile devices will be a platform in common to developers.
We here at http://mobileactive.org are excited to see what this means for the social sector. While this will certainly spur commercial development of mobile applications, we hope it will also accelerate development of applications for the social sector - in the spirit of "Android for Good." We have been tracking both mobile apps for good and the potential for many more (and a robust distribution system to disseminate and improve on robust apps) at MobileActive.org. With close to 3 billion mobiles in the world, there is huge potential for all sorts of mobile apps for good -- HIV Aids rapid information and testing services built on mobiles, climate and pollution monitoring applications, mobile information services that provide consumers with point-of-purchase environmental or other information services about products, mobile human rights monitoring applications, mobile social and organizing networks for trafficking or domestic abuse victims - the list of potential applications is as endless and varied as there are civil society causes. Let the innovation (and mobile revolution) begin!
#3, I totally agree with you. It's all about the platform, and Google is coming out with some major ones at an unprecedented rate: http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Platform_Is_What_Matters
Do we *have* to concede the eye candy factor to Apple before anything comes out? Sure it's likely, but somehow I believe that declaring it a done deal makes for a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like the whole of the tech community went before some judge and agreed to this overarching stipulation for all time.
Correct me if I'm wrong - but nowhere in the press release does it mention that Android will be anything like open-source - it'll be open in that there will be a Google SDK provided, to run applications written solely for Android - but it's certainly not open-source, not even ostensibly open-source.
For a true open-source mobile operating system I believe OpenMoko is the only one out there, and that's still in Alpha.
It would be great to see a major vendor support something like OpenMoko rather than just churn out their own biased product. Mobile developers already have to deal with multiple "operating systems" or rather technology platforms that have basically nothing in common (Java for some phones, .NET for others, and Flash for a different subset.) while trying to deliver the same applications and functionality. A true open-source mobile OS should provide the ability to run multiple technologies - I certainly don't have 5 different PC's to run 5 different applications - the OS deals with that for me.
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