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The danger of open source is that a platform becomes fragmented and the implementations can be of varying quality. This dilemma is highlighted in Google's decision to delay broad release of the tablet optimized version of Android, Honeycomb, a move that has reawakened fury over a 'two-tier approach'. Developers and OEMs claim that, in a truly open source environment, they should get equal access to new releases, but in fact, Google is restricting Honeycomb, for now, to its primary partners, such as Motorola, HTC and Samsung.

Google said it was holding back on general release of Honeycomb's open source code because it still had "more work to do" before the OS was ready for "other device types including phones". But this is not just about reuniting Android, with a single version applicable to small and large screens. Many Android supporters want to use it for tablets, just like Motorola and co, but will now have to wait for an unspecified time to be able to go beyond the basic reference design. Lack of access to the code will make it harder to differentiate products and, given that there may be an update to Honeycomb before year end, they will have little time to get a return on their investment.

Google's aim is clearly to ensure quality control but the firm has some tough choices ahead - whether to stick to its open source credentials and continue to draw on the benefits of a huge open development community; or whether to ensure that the Android brand is consistent and well regarded, like Apple's, which means asserting full control over the platform, who can use it and what they can do to change it.

Google is not referring to any of these issues of quality versus quantity in Android vendors and devices. It insists the issues are purely technical, and center on making Honeycomb suited to the whole range of gadgets, not just tablets. In an interview with BusinessWeek, Android chief Andy Rubin indicated this could take several months to resolve.

He said: "To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design trade-offs. We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones." So Google took a "shortcut" and released an OS suited only to tablets. He added that, if Google were to open up the Honeycomb code now, it could not prevent developers from putting it on phones and "creating a really bad user experience. We have no idea if it will even work on phones".

"Google refused to give out any information about Honeycomb, and the end result was no one could deviate from the reference design," said a senior engineer with a large mobile systems maker in Taiwan, as quoted by the magazine.

Taking a different twist on Android tablets is RIM, which has confirmed that its upcoming PlayBook will be able to run Android apps as well as its own operating system. This was first reported in February, and now the company has officially said it will launch two optional 'app players', which will provide runtimes for BlackBerry Java and for Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) respectively. It will also soon release the native developers' kit for the PlayBook, supporting C/C++ on the BlackBerry Tablet OS, which uses the technology acquired with QNX last year.

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