Android Gets a Big Backer in Verizon, and Palm Opens Up
by Sam Dean - Oct. 06, 2009Comments (1)- Related Blog Posts
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The prospects for mobile open source just get brighter and brighter. Following months of rumors, Verizon Wireless has said that it will put substantial resources behind the open source Android platform, in a broad partnership with Google. Google and Verizon will work together to deliver new products and services that they say will arrive "in the hands of consumers quickly." Notably, both companies have pledged to put unique applications onto handsets, including apps from their internal developers and others from third-party developers.
In other mobile open source news, Palm held an event in the San Francisco Bay Area last night, at which it said that although the company usually charges developers $99 to build apps on the WebOS platform, now it will waive the $99 fee if the apps are open source. Here are more details on both announcements.
As GigaOm notes, Google and Verizon have made very clear that they won't drag their feet on their Android partnership, and that it's far reaching. In fact, they've pledged that handsets will arrive in the next few weeks. There are numerous implications to the deal. Android gets a huge carrier to help it carve out more market share, even as Motorola has pledged to concentrate its mobile handset efforts on Android as well. What's not yet clear is how the App Store situation will play out, though. Android Market is flourishing with applications, but could Verizon concentrate on its own app store exclusively?
The deal between Verizon and Google sounds like the biggest partnership surrounding Android yet, with two giant, powerful companies backing the still relatively new open source operating system. It's hard to believe that earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress, when no Android phones showed up, many people worried about the future of the platform.
On the Palm front, the company's news that it will waive its $99 fee to developers if they are working on open source applications represents good timing. As GigaOm notes, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, two ex-Mozilla employees who are expected to pound the open source drum at Palm, delivered the news. What's really notable, though, is that the news comes right on the heels of a brouhaha between Palm and the open source community. Palm allegedly recently rejected an application from its app catalog because the source code was available elsewhere. That kind of policy is likely to change under Galbraith and Almaer.
