Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff | InfoWorld | First Google Android phone suite completed | January 13, 2008 08:33 PM

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First Google Android phone suite completed

January 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)

First Google Android phone suite completed

While the world awaits an ear-candy update from Steve Jobs at this week's Macworld, the iPhone's most likely long-term mobile buzz disrupter, Google's Android platform, received a boost from a small California-based development firm that will tomorrow announce a complete suite of phone apps based on Android, according to a report today on USA Today's Web site.

[ For an in-depth look at the Android SDK, see Analysis: Long odds for Google's ambitious Android. ]

The firm, A La Mobile, has deployed a Google browser, phone dialer, audio player, calendar, and contacts manager onto a Qtek 9090 smartphone from HTC, which is part of the Google-launched Open Handset Coalition. Boasting more than 30 partners, Open Handset hopes to shake up the mobile market by simplifying mobile app development via Android's open development platform.

A La Mobile's suite includes such ancillary phone favorites as camera software and games, and offers calculator and note-taking functionality. The prototype suite will be pitched to handset makers, A La Mobile CEO Pauline Lo Alker told USA Today.

A La Mobile is one of many teams presumably working to develop for Android. After all, Google, which released its SDK for Android in November, is offering $10 million to developers of "innovative and compelling" Android-based apps.

But luring developers to establish suites using the Java-based SDK is one thing. Winning over the mobile industry is another. Many question the platform's ability to make a lasting impact. Chief among them, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who described Android as a mere "press release" in November.

Yet, assuming the suite performs, the A La Mobile announcement could be significant, if only because it lends something concrete to Google's dream.

"Android has the ambitious mission of creating a total mobile device software platform, from the chip level to the user GUI, based on Linux 2.6 and implementing a custom Java virtual machine, a WebKit-based browser, SQL database, and full application access to device hardware," InfoWorld's Tom Yager writes in his in-depth analysis at the Android SDK. "It's every mobile developer's dream, but right now, Android is a set of Java classes, some rough-hewn tools, and a device emulator, the last of these giving Android a shot at pull from end users."

Posted by Jason Snyder on January 13, 2008 08:33 PM

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