The market’s been open for about 90 minutes, and the Dow’s down 265 points. Corporations are likely to keep cutting jobs and staying away from everything risky. But a new report indicates that Motorola’s quite confident in Google’s Android platform, as it’s putting around 350 people on an Android development team.
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Ordinary consumers haven’t even gotten their hands on Android, of course, since T-Mobile’s G1 phone isn’t supposed to be released until October 22nd. Many of them may not even be aware of it; Android, unlike the iPhone, hasn’t been the subject of a massive ad campaign.
Still, Erick Schonfeld writes, “One of the original partners in the Open Handset Alliance behind the open-source mobile OS, Motorola already has 50 people on its Android team and is growing that to 350, according to an Android developer approached by a headhunter to join the team.” So it appears that the company is even adding new employees instead of just giving some current ones a side project.
Consider a follow-the-leader effect – where Motorola goes, other telecommunications corporations may feel they have to follow – and we could be looking at the start of a big change in the mobile market.
Google no doubt hopes so, anyway. And for the record, there’s no indication that the search giant offered Motorola any sort of incentive to take Android more seriously.
