Will help solve fragmentation issues, company claims
Intel subsidiary Wind River has released a commercial Android platform, optimised for Texas Instruments' OMAP 3 platform.
Wind River, which has previously contributed its software towards Qualcomm's integration of the Android OS on its Snapdragon chipset, is introducing a commercial Android platform on TI's platform to make it easier for handset developers to bring Android-based products to market. The company also hopes that a commercial platform will reduce fragmentation around Android. Fragmentation is mainly being driven by different companies developing to their own specifications around the OS. Fragmentation creates problems for developers, and for operators, who find they need to support multiple iterations of the open OS.
Jason Whitmire, general manager of Wind River's mobile business, said in a company blog post that it takes OEMs at least a year to develop an Android phone, and much longer to get differentiated products into the market.
Whitmire said that having multiple hardware platforms in play is an advantage for the industry, because it means manufacturers are not "tied" to one platform. But it also creates a "thicket of software code and hardware that is difficult enough to manage inside of one manufacturer, much less between device makers and developers."
"Indeed," he wrote, "there is a growing recognition that companies are challenged to cost-effectively create a commercial handset product based on something that's inherently unstable or changing too rapidly, especially for mass market."
This has lead to a market for professional services companies that can smooth out the testing and validation process for the vendors. Wind River is hoping that a pre-tested platform will ease the pain of that effort. Whitmire said that only time would tell which of two approaches would prove successful.
Wind River's new platform is built on several building blocks:
· Open source Android code validated and tested by Wind River
· Pre-integrated third-party software, including existing Flash technology from Adobe, OpenCORE mobile multimedia software from PacketVideo and firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating and device management software from Red Bend;
· Enhanced Android user interface and personalization options for such common branding functions as boot-up splash screen, locked idle screen, and termination screens and additional gesture-based choices for core phone functions;
· Extended framework and applications including master reset function, music player, performance and power management;
· Optimization for leading mobile hardware including Texas Instruments' OMAP34x and OMAP36x platforms.