Well after months, -- nay,
years of rumors the Google Phone (or gPhone) is upon us... almost. On a conference call this afternoon, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Andy Rubin founder of Danger, the company behind the Sidekick and founder of Android, a mobile software company gobbled up by Google; and representatives of Motorola, HTC, T-Mobile, and many others revealed an open-source mobile platform that may actually, finally, live up to the title "iPhone Killer."
Today's announcement was not the unveiling of an actual gPhone, but the announcement of a mobile platform, called
Android, to be used by the 33 companies that make up what is called the
Open Handset Alliance.
The Android mobile OS is built on
Linux and comes packaged with a user friendly interface and applications. In addition, the open nature of Android means plenty of powerful third-party applications will follow.
The software will be made freely available within a week and we can expect to see phones sporting the OS in the second half of 2008. Part of the draw of Android is a "very robust HTML web browser," according to Eric Schmidt, likely based on
Firefox.
Schmidt also left the door open on the question of whether Google is still planning on developing its own branded cell phone. "We're not announcing anything, but this is THE (perfect) platform for building a gPhone."
Oh Google, will you ever stop playing coy?
Contrary to speculation, the platform will not be completely ad-driven (note the "completely"). Instead we expect Google is hoping that by giving away a full-featured OS with a "very robust" browser they can draw more users to their web services where they will be served advertisements.
Using Android will save handset makers money that would normally be used on purchasing licenses for Symbian or Windows Mobile, or for developing their own platform. We can only hope that this will allow them to spend more on phone hardware or cut the price of the handsets.
Android sounds promising, but only time will tell if Google has another Gmail on its hands, or a failure like its lagging social network Orkut.
From
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