On 5 November 2007, Google announced that it had not been working on a gPhone or any handset for that matter. They had actually been hard at work on the core of a whole new open source OS, one that might provide a stiff challenge to Microsoft and Symbian.
The Open Handset Alliance, or OHA, was set up for the development of Android. Members of the OHA included Google, HTC, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung, LG, T-Mobile and NVIDIA, just to name a few. For a full list and chronological order of when the members joined, you may wish to refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance.
For non-programmers, it might be difficult to truly appreciate the benefits from Android as an open source system compared to the other different open source systems available. On the same note, it will be hard to find anything special or unique with regards to the direction that Android is taking.
If we can make use of the terminology of a jigsaw puzzle, it might make better sense. For a newly opened jigsaw puzzle, what most of us will probably do is to start with a piece we find more interesting or a piece from the extreme sides and try to build up the surrounding pieces from there. After a while, we might find ourselves getting small completed areas here and there and the main challenge then will be to try to find the linkages between these small areas to form even bigger areas.
On the same principle, before the setting up of Android, developers/programmers had struggled to break down the bits and pieces of a mobile phone OS, and even if successful, would find that getting one part of the system to talk to another was very difficult indeed, as they were packaged up in their own little programs (trying to find the linkages among the small areas of the puzzle piece).
But with Android, things change. The OHA, with Google as its main driving force, has taken up the challenge to literally defrag the entire Linux ecosystem into one building block. Android aims to provide a more systematic and unified platform and with this, it was hoped that it also had a desired effect of tapping on a much wider programmer base.
As you can imagine, this announcement was met with diverse responses from its competitors. Do stay tuned for Part 3 for that!
If you wish to catch the original video of the announcement from Google on 5th November 2007, here you are!
