The clone attack is becoming unstoppable

What a week it has been for portable device operating systems. This year's Computex Taiwan produced a swag of announcements relating to netbooks, smartbooks, Android, Moblin, mobile Linux and Windows, and a computer in a vase, of course.

And two if the world's biggest tech companies – Intel and Google – have firmly put their weight behind standards-based portable operating systems for both phone and netbooks it's time for the clones to attack.

And attack they did with many Taiwanese computer companies – Acer, BenQ, ECS, to name a few – have announced plans to ship products with the Android operating system.

If that's not enough to convince the rest of the industry that mobile computing will flourish with open source platforms (yes, I know the iPhone is proprietary, but it is built on open source components) and not play catch up, unlike the rise of the PC, then nothing will.

Looking back, I can't help but think what the whole PC software experience could have been if the operating system vendors (including Linux distros) “dumbed down” the experience so it was like a mobile phone.

This doesn't mean the software has to be “closed” in terms of source code, it just means the user experience is more streamlined and user friendly.

Need an open source text editor? Browse, point, click, download, and use. Insert “pay” between click and download for commercial software.

With today's announcement that Moblin will support the Android Market we are seeing the first signs of the mobile user experience moving into the personal computing space.

Anyway, back to the clone wars.

The most exciting thing about this year's Computex from a mobile phone point of view is it demonstrated the level on interest in standards-based hardware and software (aka “clones”) for mobile handsets.

Single-function, hard-coded mobile devices are a thing of the past and we're about to enter the new world of open handsets with PC-like functionality.

I encourage all mobile vendors to get on board.

Stop forcing radical hardware/software combinations down people's throats and let them be creative with their own choice of software.

This will work wonders for innovation, especially in the business market!

After Computex, this mobile year looks like it will be very, very interesting.