The first Android handsets

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Excellence Award Winner: A Mobile Robot for the Wireless Internet
By Brad Smith
WirelessWeek - April 01, 2008


More than two and a half years ago, Internet giant Google purchased a small company that few people had heard of and even fewer knew what it did. That company was Android, whose co-founders included a number of Silicon Valley veterans whose dream came to light last year in a very big way.

Everyone in the wireless telecommunications industry knows about Android now, after Google brought it out into the open last November along with a global list of nearly three dozen companies that would like to see Android change the way the mobile Internet has been done on handsets. The companies aligned under the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) to back the emergence and use of the Android platform on mobile devices.
Android’s potential promises openness and innovation, perhaps changing not only the mobile Internet but the Internet itself. Because of that, Wireless Week selected the OHA and Android for special recognition in the Emerging Technologies category in its annual Excellence Awards program.

Some analysts think Android and the OHA could be a “game changer” in the wireless industry because the Linux-based platform will be open to any developer for any application. Handset manufacturers also can use Android without paying license fees. The OHA members also promise to optimize their latest technical capabilities for handsets running the platform.

Today’s smartphones run on several different operating systems, most of which are based on proprietary technology even though they may be open to a certain extent to developers. On the opposite side of Android’s world has been Apple’s iPhone, which was completely closed until its recent introduction of a software developer’s kit (SDK).

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