The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) was a consortium of 84 firms to develop open standards for mobile devices. Led by Google, its member firms included HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, Nvidia, and Wind River Systems. Android, historically the flagship software of the OHA, is based on an open-source license and has competed against various mobile platforms, most notably iOS from Apple. The OHA was established on November 5, 2007, with 34 members, including mobile handset makers, application developers, some mobile network operators and chip makers. As part of its efforts to promote a unified Android platform, OHA members are contractually forbidden from producing devices that are based on competing forks of Android.

Products

At the same time as the announcement of the formation of the Open Handset Alliance on November 5, 2007, the OHA also unveiled the Android Open Source Project, an open-source mobile phone platform based on the Linux kernel. An early look at the Android SDK was released to developers on November 12, 2007. The first commercially available phone running Android was the HTC Dream (also known as the T-Mobile G1). It was approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on August 18, 2008, and became available on October 22 of that year.

Members

The members of the Open Handset Alliance are: