Panasonic late on Wednesday said a real chance exists that it may develop an Android-based phone of its own before the end of its fiscal 2010 year, which ends next March. The company's mobile device director Keisuke Ishii told guests of a press conference for its new phones that Panasonic is "seriously considering" Google's mobile OS. He couldn't provide a timeframe but said the market for open-source smartphones would explode to 100 million phones by 2012, giving the electronics giant a strong reason to do well in that area itself.

Android is only just reaching Japan through NTT DoCoMo's HT-03A, a localized version of the HTC Magic.

Ishii also said Panasonic was contemplating launching phones outside of its home country of Japan within the same period. He again didn't provide details but said the company was likely to be much more specific at a later date. Like Hitachi, Sharp and a handful of other Japanese firms, Panasonic only develops phones for its home market and just this week launched six new phones for NTT DoCoMo and SoftBank, including the P-07A media phone with 60fps continuous photo shooting and TV tuning. [via Tech-On]