Where’s my Gphone?
Posted by Andy Rubin, Director of
Mobile Platforms
Despite all of the very interesting speculation over the last few
months, we're not announcing a Gphone. However, we think what
we are announcing — the
Handset Alliance and Android — is more significant and
ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts
of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will
be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely
new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new
capabilities we can’t imagine today.
Android is
the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.
It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications –
all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the
proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have
developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance,
which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders
including Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile. Through deep
partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and
others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by
creating a standard, open mobile software platform. We think the
result will ultimately be a better and faster pace for innovation
that will give mobile customers unforeseen applications and
capabilities.
We see Android as an important part of our strategy of furthering
Google's goal of providing access to information to users
wherever they are. We recognize that many among the
multitude of mobile users around the world do not and may never
have an Android-based phone. Our goals must be independent of
device or even platform. For this reason, Android will complement,
but not replace, our longstanding mobile strategy of developing
useful and compelling mobile services and driving adoption of these
products through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile
operators around the world.
It's important to recognize that the Open Handset Alliance and
Android have the potential to be major changes from the status quo
– one which will take patience and much investment by the various
players before you'll see the first benefits. But we feel the
potential gains for mobile customers around the world are worth the
effort. If you’re a developer and this approach sounds exciting,
give us a week or so and
have an SDK available. If you’re a mobile user, you’ll have to
wait a little longer, but some of our partners are targeting the
second half of 2008 to ship phones based on the Android platform.
And if you already have a phone you know and love, check out
mobile.google.com and make sure you have Google Maps for mobile,
Gmail and our other great applications on your phone. We'll
continue to make these services better and add plenty of exciting
new features, applications and services, too.
What would your phone do?
Tags: , Andy, Director, interesting, mobile, PlatformsDespite, Posted, Rubin