.14 Feb 2008 11:48
New Operating System
Chipmakers including ARM Holdings Plc, headquartered in Cambridge, England; Qualcomm Inc., based in San Diego; and Texas Instruments Inc., based in Dallas, showed off their prototypes running on Google Inc.'s Android mobile operating system. This is a free, open platform created by Mountain View, California- based Google and more than 30 partners, who have formed a group called the Open Handset Alliance.
Based on prototypes shown in Barcelona this week, I can see Android competing with the iPhone's user interface and ease of use once phone makers and carriers decide to adopt it.
ARM's demo unit showed a QWERTY keyboard and bears closer resemblance to a BlackBerry than the devices shown by Texas Instruments and Qualcomm. All three run Google applications such as Gmail, Google Maps and a mobile browser. The browser is the most interesting, capable of delivering complete Web pages similar to those on the iPhone.