As many - including me - predicted, Google's acquisition of Motorola has the CEOs of other Android OEMs thinking hard about the future.

That seems to be the reasoning behind the Korean government's announcement, that together with Samsung and LG, it's laying the groundwork for a new cloud-based, open source OS for PCs, smartphone and tablets.

"Because Google is an open-source system, it cannot just switch over to a closed-source system overnight," the Yonhap news agency quoted Kim Jae-hong, a deputy minister from the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, as saying.

"Still, we cannot completely rule out the possibility of Google jumping into the smartphone business in the future."

All together now

He that Samsung had previously been very negative about joint development of a new OS, but its position changed following news of the Google-Motorola acquisition.

The project - equivalent to the Chrome OS - is planned to launch before the end of 2011 and will first roll out for laptops.

Of course, unlike LG, Samsung already has its inhouse own mobile OS, bada, although this has been downgraded by the popularity of its Android devices, only gaining users in Korea, India and some parts of Europe.

[source: Yonhap news agency]