If you are a follower of the PDAPhone industry, announcements like this are really the stuff we all look forward too. A few short years ago we had a couple of proprietary vendors that competed and gave us a new device or two each year. This year with the introduction of the iPhone, and now this... we are starting to see some real innovation. Will Palm and Microsoft be able to respond and keep their market positions?

After many rumors of what Google's GPhone would end up looking like, this announcement of the Open Handset Alliance helps us start to see it more clearly... even though there will likely never be a real Google GPhone. Here are some key points from the announcement.

• The new Adroid OS is the foundation of Google's work to create a new mobile phone platform. It will be open and based on Linux, it will be new, and it will support a wide array of cellphones from different vendors. And you can bet that it will allow Google to exploit the mobile space to widen their advertising footprint.
• There are 33 device manufacturers that are part of the Open Handset Alliance... certainly enough to see this become a succeed if they don't implode from their own weight. Absent from this list of mobile Who's Who are Palm, Apple, Nokia, and RIM.
• Google apparently doesn't intend to enter the hardware business and produce handsets, so we likely won't see a GPhone branded device. Instead the manufacturers such as HTC, LG, and Samsung will be produce them. Motorola is also one of those in the alliance, even though they already have used Linux on devices already.
• It is not a forgone conclusion that the devices will be open. This is to be the decision of each device maker who uses the platform to produce a product. The platform itself is open, however, so it is likely that at least some of the devices will be. A robust market of 3rd party applications will help this new entry succeed.
• Not a hardware producer, but one of the biggest platforms in PDAPhones... Microsoft, is not surprisingly absent from the Alliance.
• There is a split in the carriers on the alliance... Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are in, but Verizon and AT&T are out. Outside the US, China Mobile, KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, and Telefonica are in. However, it is still early in the game. With no devices expected until sometime late next year, there is a lot of time for carriers to decide to use them in their networks.
• Rumors are already starting about a new HTC device called the "Dream" platform. No pictures have been revealed, but some basic specs are starting to surface.

I believe that this new platform will really be good at helping the market for PDAPhones to grow and produce more innovative features in years to come.