Its market share may now be in decline, but few would argue Android hasn't delivered good business for Motorola – the Droid one of the platform's best selling devices.

Speculation, however, suggests Motorola may be looking to serve up its own in-house alternative, albeit in a web based form.

Platform power

Information Week claims a "source familiar with the matter" has stated that the OEM, which was recently spun off from Motorola's main business, is already at work on an OS of its own, hiring engineering talent from Apple and Adobe to create what's being billed as an alternative to Android.

It's reported that a web-centric is on the cards, purely because web developers would be able to work on software from the word go.

"I know they're working on it," Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg told the site.

"I think the company recognises that they need to differentiate and they need options, just in case. Nobody wants to rely on a single supplier."

Android issues

However, it appears the firm is keeping its cards close to its chest in order not to upset either its partners, or the market as a whole.

"They don't want to give Wall Street and developers the impression that they're going back to the Motorola of old where they're working on 50 million operating systems at once," added Goldberg.

"They want to be financially disciplined about this."

Concern that fragmentation issues are damaging Android's image are also on the agenda, the report states, with the development of a Motorola OS handing the firm the option of falling back on its own platform if consumers lose patience with Google's variant, albeit at the cost of having to persuade developers to support another OS.

[source: Information Week]