Android Prototype may land in Barcelona Next Week

ARM, a British chip designer, may reveal a prototype of a mobile phone based on Google’s open-source Android next week at the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona. The showing could come as early as Monday. Google and ARM have declined to comment on this, so don’t book a flight to Spain unless you’re willing to gamble on this rumor.

Taiwan’s High Tech Computer Corp. and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile both plan to offer phones based on Google’s Android software platform. Google is touting Android as a software system that may shakeup mobile telecommunications. Android is designed to make the Web as accessible from mobile devices as it is from PCs.

Android is supported by the Open Handset Alliance which is in direct competition with the LiMo Foundation. As MobileCrunch reported earlier this week, the LiMo Foundation (plans) to Launch (its) Phone Platform in March. By showing its wares at Barcelona, the Open Handset Alliance may be trying to show that its system is ready for a handset while LiMo has yet to launch its platform. If this kind of race interests you, it looks as though the match has gone from the theoretical to the practical.

Research firm Strategy Analytics predicts that Android will be in 2% of smartphones by the end of this year.