Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson and chip designer Arm have announced backing for the Open Handset Alliance, the organisation behind the open-source Android mobile operating system.

"Sony Ericsson is excited to announce its membership of the Open Handset Alliance and confirm its intention to develop a handset based on the Android platform," said Rikko Sakaguchi, head of creation and development at Sony Ericsson.

According to Sakaguchi, the company is "a strong supporter of open operating systems" and he believes that the Open Handset Alliance will open up new opportunities for handset development.

Arm said it has been working with the Android platform for some time to help deliver a richer mobile experience. As part of this new announcement Arm said it will contribute its ARMv6 and ARMv7 architecture-based OpenMax DL libraries, as well as information on the Arm CPU and Ark Mali GPU architectures, to the Android Open Source Project.

"Arm welcomes the opportunity to join the Open Handset Alliance and collaborate with its members who, like Arm, are fully dedicated to enabling next-generation mobile applications and services," said Ian Drew, vice president of marketing for Arm.

"We will work closely with our OS partners, such as the Open Handset Alliance, to ensure that they can take full advantage of the Arm architecture, and bring this revolutionary platform to market - enabling more devices such as the Arm Powered T-Mobile G1, the first handset to use the Android platform."

Sony Ericsson and Arm are just two of several companies to have joined the group recently. Other new members include AKM Semiconductor, ASUSTek, Atheros Communications, Borqs, Garmin, Huawei, Omron Software, Softbank Mobile, Ericsson, Teleca AB, Toshiba and Vodafone.

The Alliance hopes that the slew of new members will help accelerate the availability of new Android devices, contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the platform through new products and services.