AT&T is finally warming up to Google’s phone OS, Android. T-Mobile and Sprint and members of the Open Handset Alliance, which champions Google’s new Linux-based platform, and Verizon has promised to make its network open to any device, a move that likely had Android devices specifically in mind. At the CTIA wireless show in Vegas AT&T Mobility chief, Ralph de la Vega said, “I like it a lot more than I did before… It’s something we would want in our portfolio.” His conversion on Android came after Google executives showed him that AT&T would be able to load its own applications on any Android handset it sold. Previously, the company had been fearful the handset would be geared too much towards the Google brand.
A La Mobile, a San Ramon, CA based open source handset software development, has deployed Google’s Android platform into an HTC Qtek 9090 smartphone. The company is touting it as the first functioning Android-based handset. The company included in the suite of applications a Google browser, phone dialer, audio player, maps, camera, games, calendar, contacts manager, calculator, tasks manager and notes. “While mobile Linux has made steady progress in the industry since 2006, Google’s advocacy with the unveiling of the Android framework further substantiates the position of Linux as a major mobile operating system alongside Windows Mobile and Symbian,” a la Mobile’s president and CEO Pauline Lo Alker said in a statement. Read the full story here.
Miguel Helft October 11, 2007, New York Times For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google have been working in secret on a mobile-phone project. As word of their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists before a speech by Steve Jobs. But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s. Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile internet, a small market today but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile-phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project.
A version of the increasingly popular Linux operating system Ubuntu will be developed for use on net-enabled phones and devices. The Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project aims to create the open source platform for initial release in October 2007. The operating system will be developed by members of the Ubuntu community, along with staff from chip giant Intel. Its development was prompted by the growth of power hungry portable devices that place new demands on software. “It is clear that new types of device – small, handheld, graphical tablets which are Internet-enabled – are going to change the way we communicate and collaborate,” said Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman.
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