The Google Open Handset Alliance today has just announced 14 new members are on board for further developing and adopting Google’s Android Mobile OS. The new companies include Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Garmin, ASUSTek, AKM Semiconductor Inc., Telco Vodafone, among others. Ericsson has also previously announced it plans to release a Google powered device by mid 2009. “Sony Ericsson is excited to announce its membership of the Open Handset Alliance and confirm its intention to develop a handset based on the Android platform,” said Rikko Sakaguchi, CVP and head of Creation and Development at Sony Ericsson. The most notable news here is that Vodafone is on board, who has more than 280 million subscribers. The GPhone is expected to sell about 500,000 units by the end of 2008 (manufactured by HTC), and will only sell more given the new partnerships in 2009. The GPhone is free for partners to use while other mobile operating systems are significantly more costly. I can tell you from experience that each Windows Mobile license costs about $7 per unit, while Symbian costs about $3 per unit. Clearly, there is a lot of money for companies to save when they sell millions of units.

The mobile phone space has become very interesting recently. Companies are realizing consumers expect more, want to stay connected, and want to have access to a variety of reasonably priced applications. More recently, BlackBerry maker RIM started a $150 million fund towards the development of third party applications for the BlackBerry. However, third party applications for the BB are scarce and pricey. Nokia also realizes that users want to stay connected with friends all the time and will introduce a new home-screen platform for their upcoming Nokia N97 where users can easily update their location and stay connected with friends via Facebook and other social networking services. As the GPhone becomes widely adopted, we will begin to see an array of programs, that will hopefully benefit consumers as other market players increase innovation to push bigger and better products of their own.