The next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich is likely to be launched by October — November, Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt has announced.
“We have a new operating system, internally known as Ice Cream Sandwich for some reason, which is being released in October/November, which everyone’s really excited about,” said Eric in an interview at the DreamForce conference organised by SalesForce.
Earlier this year, Google announced the Ice Cream Sandwich update at the Google I/O conference. Ice Cream Sandwich is expected to combine the best elements from the Honeycomb (for tablets) and Gingerbread (for smartphones and tablets) into a single OS and uniform user interface.
News trickling in from different sources suggests the iPhone 5, Windows Phone 7 Mango and the Ice Cream Sandwich from Google — all will arrive in the market at approximately same time.
Considering the October timeframe, there are two big conferences. First one, CTIA Enterprise and Applications on October 11 takes place in San Diego, USA, where all major mobile handset, wireless network technology enablers, developers and pretty much every major company in mobile software will be present. Bunch of new handsets are expected to be announced there.
Secondly, AsiaD conference by All Things Digital will take place in Hong Kong where in Andy Rubin, senior vice president of Google is going to be present along with other big executives like Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, Sony Corporation’s executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai and ASUS chairman Jonney Shih. We expect some major announcement or at least a display of upcoming tablets or smartphones.
Last year, Andy Rubin demonstrated Android 3.x Honeycomb operating system running on the Motorola XOOM prototype at the All Things D’s Dive into Mobile conference. We can expect the Nexus Prime smartphone or Motorola XOOM successor to be shown at the AsiaD conference this year as well.