LG and VMware Developing Virtualized Android Phones for Work and Play

If you’re going to only use one smart phone, just to be safe make sure it has a split personality, say LG and VMware. Today the Korean electronics manufacturer and Silicon Valley-based software company announced a partnership to bring greater security to LG phones. Using VMware’s virtualization technology which enables a handset to isolate corporate accounts from personal info, the plan is to allow users to choose an LG mobile device without creating a security hole.

Hopefully this will put IT managers in charge of large corporate networks a bit more at ease. Typically these folks crave the proven, though pricey, security RIM BlackBerry solutions offer and understandably sweat a little when employees link unsanctioned phones to their work  email. It’s also clear from this move that both LG and VMware recognize the trend that individuals are drifting away from business-only devices in favor of app-driven models which can have fun too.

No doubt others have tried to capitalize on this new customer preference for merging work and play on one single device. HTC has been offering customizable scenes, think weekend and weekday modes, within its Sense interface for years.  A neat trick to be sure, but not something that’ll soothe the nervous IT crowd quite as much Virtualization, which  basically splits the phone’s OS in half.

This video via Engadget (below) demonstrates the VMware virtualization pretty well.