Android And The Mythical Gphone

The next big thing in the mobile world.

Today, there are 1.5 billion television sets in use around the world. 1 billion people are on the Internet. But nearly 3 billion people have a mobile phone, making it one of the world's most successful consumer products. Building a better mobile phone would enrich the lives of countless people across the globe. The Open Handset Alliance™ is a group of mobile and technology leaders who share this vision for changing the mobile experience for consumers.

Android is a mobile phone platform based on the Linux operating system and developed by the Open Handset Alliance. The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecoms companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. When released in 2008, most of the Android platform will be made available under the Apache v2 open-source license. If you can measure a new technology's popularity by the number of companies trying to attach their names to it, then Google's new Android mobile-phone platform is a big deal. Some of the giants involved in the project are Intel, Motorola, HTC, LG, Samsung, Telefonica, China Mobile, KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Wind River Systems etc.

In July 2005 Google acquired Android Inc. At that time little was known of Android Inc. other than they made softwares for mobile phones. This started rumors that that Google is planning to enter the mobile phone market. At Google a team led by Andy Rubin had developed a Linux based mobile device OS which they were marketing to handset makers and carriers on the premise of providing a flexible and upgradeable system.

Android supports a whole lot of applications. We can use gtalk, orkut, the google search engine etc on our Gphone. We can probably incorporated devices such as the OBD (On Board Diagnostic) scanner on the Gphone and check different parameters like tyre pressure, fuel left, oxygen level etc in a car. Google has applied for a patent for a mobile payment system known as Gpay that would let the user send a text message to Google giving the details of a payment to a specified recipient. Gpay would then debit the user’s bank account crediting the money to the payee. The company could very well have a trump card to play, if it follows through on its interest in the 700MHz spectrum auction scheduled for January 2008 at the FCC. Google is leaving no stone unturned to challenge the big guns of the mobile market like Nokia, Sony Ericcson and Microsoft.

But on the other hand, Google is unlikely to launch a "Gphone" mobile device because it doesn't fit in with its business model. It's a tough move for Google to go into the device market. The most notable thing about it is not who's in the Open Handset Alliance group, but who's out: Microsoft and Nokia. And why are they out? Because they already make cell-phone operating systems. Much has been made of the notion that Google will license its new cell-phone OS, Android, for free. And much has been made of the possibility that Google will introduce compelling new mobile apps. But I don’t think either promise will amount to much? Because this is what Andy Rubin (Google's director of mobile platforms) had said “We recognize that many among the multitude of mobile users around the world do not and may never have an Android-based phone. Our goals must be independent of device or even platform. For this reason, Android will complement, but not replace, our longstanding mobile strategy of developing useful and compelling mobile services and driving adoption of these products through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile operators around the world.

More interesting is the claim that HTC is a firm that's going to make Gphones. This seems a lot more plausible, because it knocks down speculation that Google would make Gphones. Also, HTC is quite plausible as a Gphone maker, since they are a generic Taiwanese ODM (trying to become a branded vendor) with US presence via Cingular (AT&T), and in fact is only known in the US because they have already used someone else's software (Windows Mobile) as a market entry strategy. But of course, if Google is a mobile software supplier, there will be many other vendors.

I guess Google will keep building mobile versions of its apps -- Gmail, YouTube, and the like for real phones that people actually use today, not the mythical Googlephone, or the handsets Google's partners may release next year. And everyone, not just Googlephone users, will benefit from those apps. But apparently the phone has roughly five prototypes that Google had built to demonstrate the Open Handset Alliance software to potential members, and HTC's Peter Chou says in the two years it's been working on OHA designs, "this is the best one we've seen." The device itself, which measures about 3 x 5-inches, sports a touchscreen, navigational controls at the base, and a full swivel out keyboard. When swiveled the screen goes from portrait to landscape mode, but unfortunately that's the limit of info on the actual hardware. The software apparently has "time-sensitive" touch controls that expands your area control the longer you touch. Icons for your most important apps -- which are apparently email, text documents, and YouTube -- are lined up across the top of the screen. There's also some fancy stuff under the hood to keep an ongoing browser session open to speed launch times, and the browser downloads large files in stages to speed delivery.

Can Google really be a mobile-software developer, search engine, application house, and wireless carrier? And will people actually want to use that? We might soon find out. Watch out for Google in 2008.