Developers hoping to get their hands on the code for Google's Android 3.0 tablet operating system will have to wait a while yet.
The web giant has confirmed it is holding fire on releasing code for the new OS - also known as Honeycomb - to developers until it is ready for other platforms too.
"Android 3.0, Honeycomb, was designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes and improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customisation," Google said in a statement.
"While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones."
The statement added: "Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready."
Whilst Google confirmed developers would have to sit tight for the source code, the company was not as forthcoming with the exact details as to when they could expect the wait to be over.
Android 3.0 is already available in the form of the Motorola Xoom.
"To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," Google's engineering vice president and Android group head Andy Rubin, is quoted as saying in BusinessWeek.
"We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut,"
"We have no idea if it will even work on phones," Rubin added, saying Google didn't want the end result to be a "really bad user experience."
Is Android fit for business yet? Read our feature exploring the topic to find out.
