Open Handset Alliance

Open Handset Alliance: 14 New Members

Posted by Sam Churchill on December 9th, 2008

The Open Handset Alliance announced today that 14 additional companies have joined the founding members, supporting Android as an open mobile platform. The Google-inspired Open Source Project runs T-Mobile’s G1, and soon will be on a variety of other platforms.

The new members are: AKM Semiconductor, ARM, ASUSTek, Atheros, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin, Huawei, Omron Software, Softbank, Sony Ericsson, Teleca AB, Toshiba and Vodafone.

When the Open Handset Alliance was announced a year ago, it launched with 34 partners, including T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Sprint Nextel, and NTT Docomo.

New members will either deploy compatible Android devices, such as the original T-Mobile G1, will contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the ecosystem through products and services that will accelerate the availability of Android-based devices.

Sony Ericsson said their multimedia handsets like the Cyber-shot will utilize Android and Motorola is focusing on Android phones. Sprint’s upcoming mobile developer’s conference on Dec. 10-12, will include a keynote by Rich Miner, Google’s vice president of mobile technology.

Of course not everyone is joining this party. Nokia has their Symbian Foundation and Verizon has joined with The Limo Foundation.

In other news, LG announced a new long term evolution chip for cell phones. LG claims that it reached 60Mbps downloads and 20Mbps uploads with the LTE chip in its labs and believes the chip will be ready for use in phones by the time LTE networks are deployed in 2010. AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and other U.S. network operators have chosen LTE for their next-generation network technology.

source: dailywireless.org