The chasing pack
Perhaps not coincidentally, LG announced a couple of new Android 2.2 phones on day one of Nokia World and HTC held its own London event to launch, you guessed it, a couple of Froyo phones on the second day. Android provides an instant suite of Google software and services for any OEM and the capacity, as HTC demonstrated, to innovate on top of the OS.
In case we had forgotten just how competitive the mobile space is these days, we had Microsoft maintaining the hype around the launch of Windows Phone 7 by announcing the launch of final developer tools for WP7 (see video below, sorry if some browsers can't view it, blame Microsoft), we had RIM announcing healthy profits in spite of all this competition, and HP was keen to remind everyone that webOS is still a player.
Oh, and on the chip side we had the small matter of ARM announcing a new chip that promises to be five times faster than its current best effort and Intel outlining its plans for global mobile and embedded domination at IDF in San Franciso.
What this all means is that, despite it occupying the attention of pretty much every technology company in the world, the mobile Internet environment remains quite immature. Apple and Google have strengthened their positions this year, but that has only served to renew the resolve of everyone else to topple them. We're still at the start of what promises to be a long conflict.
