All eyes on Google's Android

12/02/2008 14:27 - (SA)


Barcelona, Spain - The first cellphones fitted with Google's Android software platform made their debut at an industry trade show on Monday, a key advance in the struggle to bring the power of desktop computing to handsets.

Google launched Android last year, hoping to establish its software as the dominant operating system for cellphones and to improve the quality of web-browsing for handset users.

"What is happening with Android today is that we are seeing a number of technology companies demonstrating how Android will operate on their technology," Google spokesperson Barry Schnitt told AFP on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress.

Although the technology on display on Monday is in prototype form, experts and journalists were so eager to witness its demonstration that all places for private displays were booked out on Monday within the first hour of the show.

"It's definitely very promising," an analyst for technology research firm Gartner, Carolina Milanesi, told AFP. "This means that we should be on track to see commercial devices in the second half of 2008."

She stressed however that "the road between a prototype and commercial handset is a long one".

Google announced a broad 34-member group called the "Open Handset Alliance" in November last year to develop Android, including China Mobile, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Telefonica, LG and eBay.


More at: News24.com

Advertising on mobile devices, including cell phones will in the not too distant future impact on all of us. It's potentially a huge multi-billion dollar market and it will be tapped and exploited for sure.

In my opinion there's a very thin line between advertising and spam and it will be interesting to see how that develops.

I saw a report that says the current android based handsets are in the early beta stages at best right now. They currently only have basic functionality and not much of anything in the way of a nice user interface. It's a great idea in concept, but it seems to be moving along pretty slowly. At this rate, I'd expect MS to have a better version of windows mobile available before android reaches a production state.