Motorola building own phone OS, they should use Windows Phone

Motorola is rumoured to be building their own phone operating system based on web standards, hiring developers from Adobe and Apple.

Analysts are suggesting the move is to counter the risk of being wholly dependent on Google for their smartphone OS, a risky strategy given the shaky legal foundations the mobile operating system is built upon.

As Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg notes: “Nobody wants to rely on a single supplier.”

Both Microsoft and Apple are current suing Motorola, and it is likely a licensing agreement with Microsoft would make at least one of these go away, and provide Motorola with more leverage with Google, who has recently started asserting its power by demanding OEMS not customize the user interface for Honeycomb tablets.

Android has so far gathered up 37 law suites in less than 2 years, and face accusations of wide-spread IP theft. Google provides no indemnification for its OEMs, leaving them to bear the brunt of Google’s machinations.

While creating their own operating system is a bold move, the likely outcome is great software with no ecosystem, much like Samsung’s Bada and HP’s webOS, both of which failed to get developer momentum.

Windows Phone 7 appears to be in a different league from these operating systems, gathering an impressive 11,500 apps in only a few months.

Motorola has of course never closed the door completely to Windows Phone 7, and while Nokia has decided to stop wasting $3 billion a year developing their own OS, may eventually decide the effort is not worth the return, and come back to its roots.