One of the potentially hottest and most important upcoming technologies posing a challenge to Microsoft's Windows Mobile is Google's Android operating system. Google, along with the "Open Handset Alliance," announced in November the upcoming platform, and that many of the largest handset manufacturers and most important cellular service providers in the world are supporting it.

Android is different from most existing smartphone platforms such as Windows Mobile and Palm OS because it's "open source," meaning the code is being made freely available to anyone interested in seeing it in a completely transparent way. As a result, third party software developers and handset manufacturers have tremendous flexibility in writing add-on applications and creating enhancements to it. In some instances, users won't even be able to distinguish between native and third party programs as a result.

There is good reason to expect the platform to take marketshare. Besides being supported by the multi-hundred billion dollar powerhouse Google, the Open Handset Alliance includes multi-billion dollar powerhouses such as HTC, Motorola, LG and Samsung. In the United States, Sprint and T-Mobile will offer Android devices. An early look at the Android SDK was released in November, and Google announced $10 million in prizes for the best third party software applications developed for it.

We asked Palm, one of the most notable holdouts to developing Android devices, why they preferred to develop devices with Windows Mobile (and Palm OS) instead of jumping on the Google bandwagon. Palm's complete reaction to Android is discussed in a recent podcast. Generally Palm's reaction was that they will benefit from the development of Android because the source code is being shared openly. Palm said they don't conversely have to share their technology with other manufacturers. Furthermore, Google has an advertising rather than a software licensing revenue model. Therefore, Palm believes proprietary services such as Google Maps and Google Earth are likely to be shared with all handset manufacturers including Palm regardless of their participation in the Open Handset Alliance.

Perhaps the most important chip manufacturer involved in the alliance, Qualcomm, had a display area at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They produce tiny processors that actually host the Android code. Qualcomm shared with us a demonstration of their chip and the soon to be commercially released operating system.

Check out our video and get a very early sneak peak into an important future direction for smartphones.

Related Links

Google's long awaited smartphone announcement is Android

Why Palm says not adopting Google Android

Direct Link to Google Android video demonstration by Qualcomm