Andy Rubin, Android, and making the mobile world a better place.

The Techland Fortune/CNN Blog has an interview up with Android deity Andy Rubin (is ANDroid named that 'cause of him?) straight from the back-room dealings at CES. There are some great bits of info in there...

...On HTC producing the first Android phone:

Well I’m not sure if we said they would be first, but second half of 2008 is what we’re targeting for phones.

...On SDK bug-tracking:

In a couple of weeks we’ll have an online mechanism. We thought it was more important to get the SDK out there in developers hands first.

...On Android's lofty goals:

Software takes a lot of time to develop, and the software cost of a cell phone is about 20 percent. That is impacting consumers and making cell phones more expensive. The trickle-down effect is that it’s actually making data plans more expensive. By building a complete stack and having it be more open where there’s not a single vendor that’s selling it - we’re actually giving it away for free - we feel that it opens up the market in a way that benefits the consumers. It will make cell phones and data plans cheaper.

...On the issue of fragmentation:

If we’re worried about not fragmenting and not creating anything new then we’d still be using tubes in our radios and you’d have to warm up the TV.

It's a short interview, but action-packed.