By Emmanuel Narokobi

Well not really like little robots taking over our phones, but rather a software called Android. But before we get to that, a little background story telling. The development of software applications in computers have been driven by 2 major schools of thought. Proprietary software and Open Source software. Whichever side of the fence you’re on it has no doubt always been a heated debate and none other than Microsoft (aka The Evil Empire) has always had to defend itself against people saying that it’s source codes being kept a secret hurts the development of software because it is not able to be more customisable, especially since they have a monopoly on desktop software. Open Source evangelists on the other hand argue that software should be customisable (such as LINUX) so that people can get exactly what they want out of a software program instead of being force fed an application that they may not entirely need.

Now having said that about software on PC’s you can’t go past the thought that the software on mobile phones must and will have to go through the same debate in terms of it’s development to make mobiles more user friendly and well just simply more useful all round. Why shouldn’t I go past that thought you may ask?

Well simply because 1 billion people are on the Internet, but nearly 3 billion people have a mobile phone, making it one of the world’s most successful consumer products. So it goes without saying then that building a better mobile phone would enrich the lives of a countless number of people across the globe. The major Operating Systems (OS) on smart phones today are Microsoft’s Windows CE and Symbian, but where would we be without Google having a go at this too? Enter Andriod, Google’s offering for an OS to challenge and hopefully expand the usefulness of the gadgets closest to our pockets and purses each day.

As you can expect though, the better software applications perform on mobiles then the further Google will be able to expand their advertising. What would be great though would be if their advertising could somehow off set the costs of some of the features we may have access to on the phone so they are free as on the internet. Again, I have no clue when PNG will see any of this technology in use, but the features shown in the video below are very intriguing nevertheless.

See also comments by Micorsoft’s Steve Ballmer.