October 21, 2008

Today, Google and the Open Handset Alliance announced the availability of the Android platform source code to everyone, for free, under the new Android Open Source Project. This represents the first truly open and fully featured mobile platform, which will enable people to create a mobile device without restrictions, build applications that run on Android-powered devices, and contribute to the core platform.

As an open source project, anyone can contribute to Android and influence its direction. That means that anyone can download, build, and run the code needed to create a complete mobile device. With an open source platform, developers, OEMs, carriers and code contributors are given the opportunity to build faster, cheaper and more innovative devices and services.

Android is a complete, end-to-end software platform that can be adapted to work on any number of hardware configurations. Having an open source mobile platform will dramatically reduce the time and resources required to bring mobile devices to market. Handset manufactures can access a complete, full featured mobile stack without any barriers and get a head-start on creating as contemporary a device that they want to build. Developers for the first time can contribute code, with a full set of APIs that allows the platform to host applications written by third-party developers and carriers can offer faster, cheaper and more innovative devices and services.

"Open source allows everyone and anyone equal access to the ideas and innovation that can make good products great," said Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms, Google. "An open sourced mobile platform, that’s constantly being improved upon by the community and is available for everyone to use, speeds innovation, is an engine of economic opportunity and provides a better mobile experience for users."

With the availability of Android to the open source community, consumers will start to see more applications like location-based travel tools, games and social networking offerings available to them directly; cheaper and faster phones at lower costs; and a better mobile web experience through 3G networks with richer screens.

For more information around the Android Open Source Project visit, source.android.com.

For more information around Android visit, www.android.com.

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