The most recent SymbianOne monitor newsletter has commentary on Yahoo!'s latest foray into open, mobile application development and the company's statement that the offering will enable porting to any mobile devices running android.

The Challenges of Open... While there was some interesting Symbian news from this week's CES one item of largely non-Symbian news got us thinking. It was the comment by Yahoo's Marco Boerries that their latest mobile offering would be ported to any devices running Android.

One of the challenges for service providers like Google and Yahoo is how to capture business in the mobile space. In the PC world neither Google nor Yahoo are vertically integrated; they don't own the OS that runs the browser or software that runs their services. Should the mobile space be any different?

We don't think so and clearly neither does Yahoo. The challenge is always in the numbers and capturing those numbers on mobiles is about getting software onto handsets. Yahoo's approach is therefore about maximizing opportunity, while Google's is more about controlling opportunity, by effectively owning the handset as well as the service.

For Google the specter has now been raised that their platform could open the route for the competition to play, not so much in their back yard but to come and join them in the living room for a cup of tea and biscuits. And there is nothing they can do about it - at least not without a serious volte-face on the "open" promise.

Google however is not putting all its eggs in one basket and still continues to offer its services through software designed for other platforms. So Google clearly does not see Android as the "be all", at least in the short term.

The issue this raises really revolves around the now overused term "open." Exactly what does it mean, as everyone finds some way to apply it to their particular technology? One thing does seem clear, open is not vertical integration. This approach held back Apple from truly competing with Microsoft. If Apple simply built their OS and allowed OEMs to complete on the hardware, what a different place the PC market might be today.

While Google is not trying to control the hardware around Android, they will need to exert control elsewhere if the goal of generating mobile advertising revenue is to be met. The question is: Will that control take Android down the Apple path to limited, if any, success?

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