‘They are 14 of 47.’

As announced yesterday, fourteen new companies joined the Open Handset Alliance, a technology and mobile group supporting Android as an open mobile platform. Complete press release, with the names of just who signed on, can be found here.

These forty-seven companies will be working together to provide us, the consumers, with stable and high quality mobile devices, advancing technology every step of the way.

What does this mean for us as consumers? For starters, less expensive handsets since the companies who produce the hardware will already be connected to the ones who make the software and applications.

Speaking of applications, since Android is open source, really any developer can produce useful or just plain fun add-ons. Developers can find out more at the Android SDK site.

Consumers benefit from the innovation by having a more entrhalling mobile experience, and developers can grab a slice of something that shows promise of being huge.
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HTC's 'Dream' is the First Phone Slated to Run Android

Since November, HTC has reportedly been working on a phone that would run Google’s new platform Android.

The video below is a BBC report on Google’s platform. The demonstration was preformed on an unknown phone; that is, unknown until this morning when the news broke that HTC, a Google partner in the Android project, supplied the prototype for the report.

It’s called ‘Dream’, and HTC provides the capable candybar phone a full keyboard underneath the large touch screen panel (no multi-touch though), better than average processor speed (300Mhz), Google Map’s Street View, and a 3D processor for 30 fps gaming, all residing in a slightly robust 5 inches by 3 inches case.

‘Dream’ is set to ship around Black Friday; HTC will have good company with most of Google’s other partners planning similar launches around Turkey Day as well.

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