14 DAY TRIAL // Google has recently confirmed that it has set up a team that would provide technical support to hardware makers in Taiwan for the company's Android operating system developed for mobile phones. According to Chien Lee-Feng, president of Google Taiwan, the team is meant to offer support for phones.
“Android is a free, open-source mobile platform. This means that anyone can take the Android platform and add code or download it to create a mobile device without restrictions,” Google said in a statement. “It was designed from the beginning to scale downward to feature phones and upward to MID (mobile Internet devices) and netbook-style devices. We look forward to seeing what contributions are made and how an open platform spurs innovation, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”
As many of you might already know, the Android platform is a Linux-based operating system that has been until now available on the T-Mobile G1 phone, which was manufactured by the Taiwanese maker HTC.
The Android applications use the Java programming language, only that it is not the well-known Java software foundation from Sun Microsystems or the industry's Java Community Process, but instead a Google-created foundation called Dalvik.
Wind River Systems, a company that offers Linux for embedded computing devices such as phones, has also come up with an Android support business and is reported to have hired new employees for the job. The company believes that in the not-too-far future Android will be used in a wide range of other devices besides mobile phones.
At the same time, it is also known that some computer makers already announced plans to come to the market with netbooks that would feature Google's Android operating system. For the time being, it seems that Google is not working on a platform for netbooks.