Google has announced details of a major update to its tablet operating system, Honeycomb. This has previewed a whole new version of the operating system called Ice Cream Sandwich and revealed new music storage and movie rentals services. It has also previewed its new attempts to encourage companies to build accessories for Android phones and to get Android-compatible, wireless technology built into home appliances.
Made at the company’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco, the announcements came on an opening day that Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering divided into “Momentum, Mobile and More” for the Android platform. Gundotra said that there have now been 100 million Android activations involving 215 mobile networks.
Speaking beneath an illustration by British animator Fraser Ntukula showing an Android eating (an) Apple, he said that 450,000 developers were at work on products for 310 Android products in 112 countries, with 400,000 new devices now being activated every day. The 200,000 apps in the Android Market have now been downloaded 4.5 billion times.
The new version of the tablets operating system, will provide more compatibility with accessories such as keyboards and game controllers, update widgets and also be applied to the American Google TV products. Subsequently, Ice Cream Sandwich will unite the tablet and mobile phone operating system into a single programme. Google has said it is their “most ambitious release to date”.
The company is ready to launch movie rentals in Android, working across tablets, phones and Google TV, as well as a service allowing users to store their music online and access it on Android devices. Both will initially be US-only. An international network of manufacturers and mobile networks has, however, signed up to support timely updates to mobile devices. It has been unveiled that a range of new products that will extend Android’s reach into other categories will include wireless technology, that will be built into a range of lightbulbs, to allow tablets or phones to be used to turn them on or off.
