Today, the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) announced that 14 new companies have joined the Android project. OHA is a group of mobile-phone developers led by Google. The consortium is known for releasing the Android operating system, available on T-Mobile’s G1.

Among the new members, the most important are Vodafone, AsusTEK Computers Inc., Atheros Communications, Garmin International Inc., Toshiba Corporation and Garmin International Inc. According to the official press release, the companies’ orientation to Google’s alliance translates into updates and major improvements of the Android Open Source Project. It is also expected that the new members will implement the OS into the mobile devices and there will be additional services and support created for the new environment, in order to “accelerate the availability of Android-based devices.”

By far, the biggest company to join is Vodafone. With over 280 million customers worldwide, Vodafone has the power to turn the Android OS into the industry standard in the next years.

The fact that such big players in the mobile device market like ARM and SonyEricsson took the Android way raises questions whether either Symbian or Microsoft are going to rule the operating software market anymore. In addition, Symbian is also encountering financial problems at the moment.

Furthermore, it’s all about the money and Google provides substantially lower cost in software deployment than its two rivals. It seems that Google’s philosophy of “simple and intuitive” is the way to go, as both Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile are criticized for being slow and glitchy software.

The involvement of AsusTEK raises opportunities in deploying an Android-based OS in other devices than mobile phones, too. It’s not hard to predict an Android OS netbook, knowing that AsusTEK started the netbook craze.