Unsurprisingly, Android-powered cellphones will - unless significantly fettled by manufacturers - come with GMail compatibility.  If your email, calendar and contacts are of another flavour, however, the good news is that Funambol are developing what they’re calling the first open-source mobile messaging and sync client for the platform.  Already responsible for software on 1,500,000 handsets that manages push-email, calendar and contact synchronisation - including most recently a version for the iPhone - Funambol also provide commercial PIM systems, although it’s the open-source version that’s most likely to appear on gPhones.

Compatible with Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Microsoft Outlook as well as other email systems, the software interfaces with the free myFUNAMBOL portal which stores the most up-to-date collection of your PIM data.  By the end of this year, Funambol expect to have a basic, contacts-sync’ing version available; the more comprehensive email and calendar-compatible software will supposedly coincide with the first release of Android phones in 2008.

“Google Android can make a huge impact on the mobile business, like the iPhone, but in a very different way.  The iPhone had a beautiful interface but was closed and lacked a public SDK. It also worked within the confines of existing mobile operator business models. Android is the opposite — it is the ultimate open SDK for mobile devices whose interface and capabilities are limited only by the imagination of developers. Its ad-sponsored business model can radically challenge the dynamics of the wireless industry” Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO, Funambol

Interestingly, the company is claiming that development of the software was prompted by - and collaborated on - their user base, who were keen to see the service ported to Android. 

[via InformationWeek]