Google is expecting a good year for Android, and it’s got plans for the mobile operating system. The company is planning “significant” products and partnerships.
“Overall, it looks like Android is going to have a very, very strong year,” Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying during Google’s earnings call. More from Schmidt (via Seeking Alpha):
There are announcements happening between now and the end of the year that are quite significant from operators and new hardware partners in the Android space, which I won’t preannounce except to say that they really do fulfill much of the vision that we laid out more than a year ago.
On the netbook side, there are a number of people who have actually taken Android and ported it over to netbook or netbook-similar devices. So we think that’s another one of the great benefits of the open source model that we’ve used. We’re excited that that investment is occurring. And again, largely outside of Google, which we think is great.
Six or more Android phones are rumored to be on the way this year from Orange. The operating system is even going to set-top box form, courtesy of Motorola.
Now that is interesting. This device, called the “au Box,” will play DVDs and CDs, transfer music and video to a mobile device, and rip/store files according to InformationWeek. It will be interesting to see where this leads. So far, it’s being made for a Japanese ISP – KDDI. I would assume that more will be on the way eventually.
