AFP - Thursday, September
25
NEW YORK (AFP) - - Internet search giant Google launched its
long-awaited mobile phone on Tuesday, unveiling a handset developed
with telecom carrier T-Mobile to compete with rival Apple's
hot-selling iPhone.
The T-Mobile G1, the first mobile device powered by Google's
open-source Android software, will be available in stores in the
United States on October 22 and will cost 179 dollars, 20 dollars
cheaper than the iPhone 3G.
Cole Brodman, T-Mobile chief technology and innovation officer,
called the G1, built by the Taiwanese firm HTC, a "game-changing"
device for Web surfing which will "power a new mobile Internet of
the future."
The G1, which is a bit thicker but narrower than an iPhone and
comes in three colors, black, white and brown, will go on sale in
Britain in early November and in other European countries served by
T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, in early
2009.
The G1 offers many of the features of the iPhone and Research in
Motion's popular BlackBerry including a touch screen similar to
that of the iPhone, a trackball for navigation, high-speed Internet
browsing, Wi-Fi, e-mail, instant messaging and SMS texting.
It also has a Global Positioning System (GPS), a 3.0-megapixel
camera with photo-sharing capability and a slide-out QWERTY
keyboard, a feature lacking on the iPhone. Like the iPhone, the G1
cannot shoot video.
But in a direct challenge to Apple's iTunes, the entire library
of Internet retail giant Amazon's MP3 music store is available for
purchase on the G1, more than six million songs.
The new phone has, unsurprisingly, been closely integrated with
Google applications such as Google Maps and G-Mail and can play
videos from YouTube, the video-sharing site purchased by Google in
2006.
"Google is moving into the mobile devices market not to become
yet another mobile phone manufacturer but to enable a large
addressable market for its services and applications," said
Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner Consulting.
"Google's strategy is all about broad reach for their services,"
added Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. "It's just
the first step in a long strategic voyage for Google."
Google hopes the free Linux-based Android software powering the
G1 will eventually become the dominant operating system for mobile
phones.
"Android has the potential to become the de facto operating
system for Linux and we expect sales to reach around 10 per cent of
the smartphone market in 2011," said Roberta Cozza, another Gartner
analyst.
The open source Android software and ability of outside
developers to write applications for the device is seen as a major
selling point by Google and its partners.
Applications for the iPhone, for example, are tightly controlled
by Apple and mobile phone operating systems such as those of
Microsoft and global mobile phone market leader Nokia are
proprietary.
"It's very exciting for me as a computer geek to have a phone
that I can play with and modify," said Google co-founder Sergey
Brin, who made a surprise appearance at the launch event with
fellow co-founder Larry Page.
G1 users can access the Android Market, where they can download
software applications from developers around the world.
Google announced the formation in November 2007 of a 34-member
group called the "Open Handset Alliance" to develop Android,
including China Mobile, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile,
Telefonica, LG and eBay.
Google's share price soared 7.38 percent to 437.52 dollars an
hour after the launch of the G1 but it ended the day down 0.2
percent at 429.27 dollars.
