Rumor: Motorola building its own mobile OS

Over the past nine months, Motorola Mobility has been hiring engineering talent that is well-suited to create a new mobile operating system. The company has picked up a number of experienced mobile and Web engineers from Apple and Adobe to develop a Web-based mobile operating system, according to a source familiar with the matter quoted by InformationWeek. Officially, Motorola did not confirm or deny the existence of the project but did reaffirm its commitment to Android.

While Motorola has made quite a comeback in the mobile industry thanks to Android, one could argue that putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. As a result, Motorola is trying to see how it could differentiate itself from other OEMs that are also embracing Android. It wants to keep its options open, just in case, instead of relying solely on Google.

Motorola isn't the first company to push for a Web-based operating system. Palm developed the powerful webOS before the company was acquired by Hewlett Packard for $1.2 billion. HP is now pushing forward with webOS: it released version 2.0 along with new devices in October 2010 and plans to put version 3.0 on all of its PCs next year.

Motorola isn't as big as HP and definitely doesn't have the same sized pockets. As a result, it would be very difficult for the company to offer its own OS and actually gain significant share.