A couple of companies are seeking to redress some of the initial shortcomings of Android’s launch, either from a handset maker or an application developer’s perspective. Linux mobile software developer a la Mobile has taken the seemingly drastic step of parallel-engineering the Android platform from the initially released kernel, Google’s SDK and off-the-shelf Linux. A la Mobile has deposited the whole stack onto reformatted HTC Qtek 9090 smartphone (a device that normally runs Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS) and, to boot, has included a set of core phone applications such as a browser, media player, address book, calendar and task manager. According to president and CEO Pauline Lo Alker, a la Mobile isn’t doing this just as a proof of concept; it intends to sell the software stack to device makers as a way to get into the Android market before there is an Android operating system.

“Until Google formally releases this source code, nobody can put the phone together,” Lo Alker said. “There’s still a lot of confusion about what Android is and what Android is not.” Even when Google reveals the source code, device makers won’t be in the clear, Lo Alker said. Android is not exactly a true OS, she said, rather an application framework (a la Mobile is approximating the Android platform by using Trolltech’s QT framework), requiring vendors to implement the Linux software stack on their own.

“If you want to develop a Linux-based phone, you need to put all of the pieces together,” Lo Alker said. “This is beyond most handset makers capabilities. … The experience we’ve gained by putting together this demo will enable us to trim a device’s time to market by at least half!”

As a la Mobile tries to assuage worries on the handset side, Aricent is reaching out to developers. Aricent is an applications developer in its own right, perhaps best known for creating Alltel’s much-praised Celltop mobile widget solution (See Telephony’s podcast on mobile Widgets). Aricent, however, sees an opportunity to venture outside of the closed framework environment to help other app developers through the bends and turns of Google’s semi-open/semi-closed environment (Telephony’s Rich Karpinski breaks down Android’s ‘openness’ in his Telephony 2.0 blog).

While developers have been signing on in droves to build apps for Android, anyone who thinks that there will be a library of Android-specific apps and content at launch is probably deluding themselves, said Depak Mehrotra, vice president of mobile terminals for Aricent. The mobile environment is fragmented enough as it is with multiple smartphone OSes, Java and BREW to build to. While Android is intriguing to many of those developers, it’s another environment, Mehrotra said. And as of today, there is not a single Android handset in the market, while there are hundreds of millions that support Java Mobile Edition and tens of millions that support BREW and the various smartphone platforms, Mehrotra said.

“Five years from now if there are millions of Android handsets on the market, then yes, developers will build browser-based applications specifically for Android,” Mehrotra said. “But that won’t happen until there is a sustainable business model for developers.”

What that means is the new Android apps will be the same as the old apps. Developers will likely port their existing games and applications from Java and BREW to Android’s own unique flavor of Java, Dalvik, Mehrotra said—which is where, not coincidentally, Aricent plans to make its money. At least initially, most of the apps and content we see on Android will be readily available on other platforms, unless Google provides some incentive to developers to go out on a limb, Mehrotra said.

Google will certainly try to seed the market by producing its own array of Android services based on its popular Gmail, Google Maps and Google Desktop apps, but Google hasn’t slacked in developing powerful versions of those applications for other platforms. Just this week, Apple announced it is adapting its services suite for Apple’s iPhone. There seems to be no shortage of developers lauding Android and Google’s open initiatives, but so far few have committed to build specific apps for the platform. That’s likely because they don’t have anything yet to build those apps on.