Android Carrier Friendly ? VentureBeat has the Details

Over at Venturebeat they have a report coming out of CTIA that the Android puzzle is coming together.

As mobile software becomes increasingly accessible to software companies, carriers are worried that they’ll be relegated to being “dumb pipes” for data services. But the carriers are changing their stance as new figures came in, as we heard during today’s keynote debate on “Open Networks” at the CTIA conference happening in San Francisco this week.

The OHA intends to give carriers control over some aspects of mobile data and web services, while giving third party developers access to carrier subscribers. Android, while sometimes compared to Apple’s iPhone software developer kit, is a lot more than that. It is a platform that encompasses every software layer component required to create mobile operating systems and applications — and also software on other types of devices, like television set-top boxes.

The most prominent layer is the Android operating system, that will be featured on a number of phone handsets slated for release this fall, including HTC’s phone that T-Mobile will offer in the US — and the United Kingdom and Germany, we hear. In sum, as far as carriers are concerned, Android is helping them accommodate third party developers while letting them control the software interface for their subscribers. (More here.)

T-Mobile is the first carrier to really buy into the Android vision. Among other efforts, it plans to launch an “app store,” a pre-installed feature on T-Mobile phones where subscribers can browse and download third-party applications. T-Mobile may not long be the only carrier offering a store. We also hear that Telelefonica, a leading carrier in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking parts of the world, will be the next to launch one.

T-Mobile’s move, to some degree, is a counterattack against Apple’s success with the iPhone. Apple owns its apps store — not AT&T and the other carriers that offer the phone. Some carrier representatives we talked to told us that many carriers are displeased about the Apple app store. Carriers have been leery of Google, because Google is potentially the dominant mobile advertiser for hundreds of millions around the world who have mobile phones. Google is still in the middle of negotiating terms with other companies that have already signed on to OHA.

Meanwhile, Android itself has been coming along — although maybe not as fast as some in the media would have liked. It has recently released a stable version of its platform.

Android’s many pieces are not just for phones

Android and its OHA partners will be pushing development in both mobile and web technologies. To do this, Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the form of large, top-talent engineering teams that have been working on components for the last four years. This hard work is now paying off in the form of Google using core Android code for multiple products. From speaking with developers, example we’ve learned that over 60 percent of the code for Google’s new browser, Chrome, is shared with Android’s browser.