G-bomb goes off in handset industry

It’s finally happened. Google has activated its Android and set its sights firmly on Nokia/Symbian and Microsoft. And it looks like most of the rumours were right – Android is an operating system, middleware, a user interface and a set of applications. And it’s free. It’s got three of the top five handset vendors on board as well as 31 other companies, including hardware manufacturers and operators. For Moto, this looks like make or break time – if Android is successful it could help the company pull its fat out of the fire. For the rest of the handset vendors it looks like they’ll be split into two camps.

At the moment, the Google announcement raises a whole load more questions, only some of whcih will be answered by the release of the Software Development Kit (SDK) on November 12.