MobileMonday Global

^{Gphone is a soft alliance} Google’s Android gets a mixed welcome

Google’s expected Gphone announcement was a disappointment to many. Instead of Apple style handset, it turned out to be a Nokia style Alliance called Open Handset Alliance.

The device plan is called Android and it is a Linux-based software stack, which includes an operating system, browser interface, middleware and applications.

Developers will be able to crack into a software development kit next week for Android, which has assets that are licensed under the Apache version 2 license. The first Android-powered handsets might reach the market in late 2008.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt neither confirmed nor denied a Google Phone was in the works. He promised that Android would be a completely open, cost-effective and efficient way for developers to write applications for mobile phones.

Open Handset Alliance, which includes Google and 33 various companies bent on making sure Android is a success, is missing some household names in the wireless sector, analysts claim.

For starters, neither AT&T nor Verizon have joined.

"They really need to have at least one of those guys to make the alliance work in the U.S.," said Matt Booth, senior vice president and program director for interactive local media at The Kelsey Group.

Vodafone and France Telecom have not thrown their hats into the Android ring.

Nokia, which sells roughly a third of the handsets worldwide and uses the Symbian operating system in its smartphones, is not part of the alliance.

Moreover, the handset players that have joined have not pledged exclusivity to Android. Motorola and Samsung have several operating systems in their product line.

According to Karsten Weide Android has an uphill battle against leading mobile operating system Symbian, which Gartner claims has roughly 70 percent of the market. Linux has about 15 percent of this market, with Research in Motion and Microsoft each owning roughly 5 percent. IDC analyst Karsten Weide was quoted in an eWeek article.

"What all of this means is that there are billions of devices of them and none of them are from the Open Handheld Alliance," Weide said, adding that such industry alliances are notoriously hard to make work. "This can only work if there is a lot of consumer uptake and traffic to sell advertising, which will mean more revenue that can go around for the players involved in this."

Open Handset Alliance memebers
Mobile operators	Semiconductor companies	Handset manufacturers	Software companies	Commercialization companies
China Mobile	Audience	HTC	Ascender Corporation	Aplix
KDDI Corporation	Broadcom Corporation	LG	eBay	Noser Engineering
NTT DoCoMo	Intel Corporation	Motorola	Esmertec	The Astonishing Tribe
Sprint Nextel	Marvell Technology Group	Samsung Electronics	Google	Wind River Systems
T-Mobile	NVIDIA Corporation		LivingImage
Telecom Italia	Qualcomm		NMS Communications
Telefónica	SiRF Technology Holdings		Nuance Communications
	Synaptics		PacketVideo
	Texas Instruments		SkyPop
			SONiVOX

Source: News reports

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