T-Mobile is to launch the first phone based on Google’s Android design in Sep 17, in hopes that the new device will compete with Apple’s iPhone, Wired magazine reported.
The smartphone will be manufactured by Taiwan-based High Tech Computer, and will have a large touch screen that slides out to reveal a five-row QWERTY keyboard.
The device, which will be called the G1, will sell for $150 to T-Mobile customers in the first week of launch before it is offered to other customers at a higher price.
Google developed the Android design to help it expand its successful advertising business into the increasingly lucrative mobile market. It released the parameters to an alliance of mobile phone carriers, developers and manufacturers earlier in the year.
Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile announced in February that it would introduce Android-based phones in the fourth quarter of 2008.
htc first to make google’s android phone?
High Tech Computer Corp, the world’s top smartphone maker, said it might be the first company to produce phones based on Google’s mobile software platform Android.
“We’re still working on this new product and can’t say much. We’ll have the product by the end of this year. We should probably be the first from what efforts we’re putting in,” Chief Executive Peter Chou said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo.
Android phones, using a Linux-based open source operating system, will allow users to tweak and customise their own user interface, differing from traditional Windows or Symbian based handsets.
HTC, the world’s top smartphone maker, has in the last two years transformed itself from a pure contract manufacturer to a branded mobile phone company, and is betting on its newly launched Diamond smartphone to boost sales.
In India and China, where the mobile phone industry is growing at a scorching pace, the company is aiming for a growth of 100 percent and about 70 percent, respectively, this year.
When asked to pick an undervalued stock, he thought for a while and then said HTC.
“There are a lot of companies in the world. I’m so focused single-mindedly on HTC. I think the HTC stock is undervalued.” he said.
Android™, a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications will be released as SDK on November 12, 2007. Android will be a “living” platform and google will be working with the developer community to continuously enhance and enrich the platform. Android is not the elusive Google Phone that has been rumored for several weeks, but a Linux-based software stack. SDK is going to licensed under the Apache version 2 license. Android would be a completely open, cost-effective and efficient way for developers to write applications for mobile phones. Android and the alliance are interesting because they show an effort to create some commonality in a sea fragmented by multiple operating systems. Android has an uphill battle against leading mobile operating system Symbian, which has roughly 70 percent of the market. Linux has about 15 percent of this market, with Research in Motion and Microsoft each owning roughly 5 percent. This is time for open source in mobile platform. This is good move by Google.
