New service for Android design engineers

MontaVista Software says its Android Commercialisation Service can help designers realise the full potential of the Android framework and reduce time to market. The Linux specialist has established the service to address the challenge of delivering a commercial product using Android, despite the fact that there is currently no formal support available. The service includes information on porting Android to custom platforms; hardware abstraction layer porting; adding advanced features to the Android layers, Java layers and applications; and third party application integration. MontaVista's executive vice president, worldwide field operations, Art Landro, said: "Although Android offers a well integrated framework that offers the advanced functionality required for mobile products, like most open source projects, it's not the commercial quality our customers are used to working with. So, even though the Android framework significantly reduces the time to develop a product, the commercialisation effort can still take many man months and requires a high level of expertise with Linux."