Perhaps the Google Android team is getting a bit nervous, with actual working LINUX based smart phones on the horizon. Or it could be that iPhones are still selling like they were coated with crack and that Best Buy is going to start selling them as well.
Whatever the reason, the rumors of Android not being available to consumers until 2009 are getting competition from rumors that Android based phones may be availiable sooner. The word is T-Mobile will have the device.
Update: T-Mobile uses a GSM network.
Filed under: Gadget, Smart Phone | Tagged: Android, cell phone, Google |
Urbin Technology 
I don’t think the Iphone is as much as worry as you think, you still have to sign up for AT&T(and will be for the next 5 years). Now, if they were selling them with no mandatory plan, then they might be cause for concern..
Linux smartphones I think are the big worry – especially if the phone in question is under $250 – between the low price, it’s open source nature, and the huge amount of freeware, It’s a potentially huge roadblock for Google, especially if Google follows the Cellular telcos business model of nickel and diming the customer for every little thing.
I agree about the LINUX phones being more of worry. That is what I’ve been saying for a while. They will come to market faster than google phone, and by their open source nature, push the carriers toward a business model of providing service rather than the current model which says they have to make money off the hardware as well by tethering it to the network (i.e. the Apple and Verizon model).
The Google phone *may* do that, but the model isn’t “in its DNA.”
Now, all this is just crystal ball gazing, because I’m not putting much faith in the rumor of g-phone coming out in CY08. I still think that was a FUAD planting response to the first LINUX based platforms starting to see the light of day.
Personally, based on my experience running small IT departments and working closely with large IT departments, that the AT&T issue is as big as you would like it to be. They are a major US carrier, and they have the added advantage of their phones working outside the US.
The person in charge of corporate cell phone/smart phone use really would prefer to deal with a single vendor. If they are 100% domestic, any major carrier will do. If they are sending people overseas, then that isn’t true anymore. Supporting multiple vendors for the same service is a royal PITA.
Yeah, I too doubt it coming out by December – if that was on timetable, we’d be hearing alot more about.it.
What gets me is the Google phone is so far out of their business model – the last major news from google was the “Googlebox”(portable data center built into a shipping container), which makes sense since they were buying up all that dark fiber after the dotcom bomb.. Googles been trying to dominate the backbone of the internet, and it looks like they’re succeeding.
Which brings us to the cellphone. Perhaps Google plans to use some of that dark fiber in order to setup their own cellular network?
Google has been buying up a lot of dark fiber. They also have been looking to get access to bandwidth being freed up by the current analog TV signals going away.
Google isn’t so much interested in providing cell phone service as they are providing a data transport that they can sell ads on. That part of the data stream may be VoIP doesn’t get in the way of that plan.