Rapid innovation has always been the goal for the Android platform and originally served to align the interests of the OHA partners. But many OHA members are developing proprietary user experiences, which they are not contributing back into to Android—as is standard for open source projects—for fear of losing competitive advantage in the marketplace.

For some participants, the Alliance is merely a structure for Google to manage the appearance of a community around its platform, while behind the scenes using Google employees to tightly control the Android Open Source Project. One executive, a former leader at an OHA member company who asked not to be named, described the organization as “oligarchical,” not democratic. “The power is concentrated with the Google employees who manage the open source project,” he lamented. Andreas Constantinou, research director at market analysis and strategy firm VisionMobile recently challenged the value of the OHA: “The Open Handset Alliance is another myth. Since Google managed to attract sufficient industry interest in 2008, the OHA is simply a set of signatures with membership serving only as a VIP Club badge.” Only this club doesn’t really have any privileges, he maintains.

No wonder HTC is investigating developing its own smartphone platform. Given Google’s open source approach, and challenges the Taiwanese OEM will face in maintaining its Sense UI on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform, it may need a development environment they can call their own.

The difference between the Open Handset Alliance and the Android Open Source Project is subtle, but important. Google makes most of the decisions about what they define as the base level Android platform they release. The project site states, “The Core Technical Team reviews and approves requests for the set up of new projects, designates new projects as part of the core platform, and appoints or confirms the Project Leads for those projects.”

Alliance members may contribute new projects, and choose to share—or not share - code with other Alliance members, even if it is not accepted into the Android Open Source Project code base. Coincidentally, the Open Source Project website shows no road map information beyond the “Cupcake” release launched in Q2 2009, revealing little about the Android Core Technical Team’s plan for supporting specific technology innovations required or being developed by members. Meanwhile, many phones are sporting “Eclair” OS, and “Froyo” is on the horizon. The challenges also extend to more technical decisions. For instance, one organizational struggle is the inability to agree on on a Near Field Communication (NFC) standard to enable proximity-based business models.

If the organization is intended to be a catalyst for change, the evidence of the group’s impact is lean at best. It’s been more than six months since an OHA member announcement was posted to the Open Handset Alliance website, and it has been more than a year since a member quote endorsing the organization has been published.