Google Phone

It might just be Seasonal Affective Disorder, but paranoia and dark soothsaying seem to be the moods of the moment with analysts and industry professionals muttering worried concerns about Google’s long-term plans and the state of the open-source market.  While the original Android announcement - of a mobile platform built on open-source foundations that would promote flexibility and perhaps even make good on the “write once, run anywhere” mantra developers have long been promised - prompted excitement, the recent release of LiPS’ open-specifications has reminded everyone of the flipside of flexibility.  Namely, that everybody involved needs to sign up to the same standards and cooperate. 

“It’s unlikely that Android would happen to comply with LiPS 1.0 … At the end of the day, confused customers don’t buy — and confused developers don’t write apps. Then you have a fragmented ecosystem” Bill Hughes, analyst, In-Stat

Read the rest of this entry »

Overshadowed by Google’s partner-packed Android launch, LiPS (the Linux Phone Standards Forum) has nonetheless pushed ahead with phase two of their mobile Linux specification, released to developers this week.  Differentiating themselves from the work of the Open Handset Alliance by defining their project as broad standards for any Linux-based cellphone, as opposed to Android’s specific implementation, the guidelines set out a number of key telephony, UI, messaging and presence functions that would allow developers to produce applications compatible with any smartphone that adhered to the LiPS criteria.

“The basic notion of what OHA and Android put forth is an implementation of a phone stack that is Java-based and a given implementation.  If that implementation is broadly accepted and devices are built on it, it could constitute a de facto standard. Our approach is a traditional one of standardization” Bill Weinberg, General Manager, LiPS

Read the rest of this entry »