Android to power more than just mobiles
Google getting inside your telly
Okay, so this isn’t massively mobile news, but, like the rest of the world we’re very much fascinated by Google’s Android platform - we just haven’t quite figured out the ideal use for it yet.
Japanese mobile operator KDDI might be one step closer, though. The company sells a product known as the au Box, which records video from a host of different sources and can format it and forward it for playback on mobile handsets - a very popular feature over near the rising sun, and we can see why.
The next model of this video recorder has just been announced, and will apparently be powered by the Android operating system. We’ve suspected for a while (well, ever since Archos announced an Android tablet) that this operating system, which began on mobiles and therefore made us assume that’s where it’d stay, is perhaps more of a platform for connected, multimedia devices - not necessarily (though not excluding) mobiles.
KDDI also suggests that other manufacturers are currently installing Android in a variety of other devices , such as televisions and VoIP phones. A more capable and expandable operating system in something like a telly or video recorder suggests all kinds of possibilities (let’s fondle the idea of an internet connected touch screen TV, or a video recorder that gets its content not from broadcast, but the net, and streams them to your home network), so perhaps the apparently slow moving Android is simply still finding its electronic feet.
Anyone got any other good ideas for Android, outside of mobiles?
