The iphone and googlephone assualt on the rest of mobileland is having an effect. It seems that the other mobile handset OEMs are now gathering behind a proposed tool for building mobile apps based on Eclipse. It will hopefully work well and integrate some of the web features available for iphone development under Aptana, which is also built on top of Eclipse.

The Register have a good round up of information on this new plugin called ‘Pulsar’, which suggests a timeline of a product this coming summer. This would fit in with the other annual releases of Eclipse that have occured the past three years or so. You’ll find less details in the project’s own pages, but more about this ‘Mobile Interest Working Group’ in their charter. Interestingly, neither Google nor Apple are part of this group, and Sun is also missing, but given the open sourcing of the JDK that is not the issue that it might have been in the past.

Happily it looks like it will build upon the resurrected Mobile Tools for Java (MTJ), which has now pulled in the work of EclipseME. It also appears to bring in the Tools for Mobile Linux (TML) project.

All in all this could be a good development if there is one plugin, one tool, which will allow both web and installed mobile app development. Could be a sweetspot.