Android Chi

FT.com's Android article:

Google’s success in drawing a wide group of mobile industry players to its technology marks a sharp contrast with Microsoft, which has tried for years to win support for a mobile version of its Windows operating system.

That effort was resisted for years by many in the mobile industry, who saw it as an attempt by Microsoft to bring the economics of the PC business to the mobile, a move that might undermine the profits of hardware makers and operators and favour the software company.

While there had been widespread reports that Google would announce alliances to create its own handsets – potentially even carrying the Google brand – it instead laid out a strategy that will give it a background role.

“Today’s announcement is more ambitious than any single ‘Google Phone’ that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks,” said Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive.

The first handsets to take advantage of the new technology should go on sale in the second half of next year, Google said.

The software is designed to make it easier for developers to create mobile applications that run on many different handsets. At the moment, mobile technology is fragmented, relying on several different operating systems and development environments. That has reduced the potential market for developers creating games, entertainment or other services for one handset.

More in the FT.com article.