A release date has been issued for the first mobile phone to
use Android, the mobile operating system being driven by Google through a
collective of partners it pulled together last year. It’s to be called the G1
and will be available on T-Mobile. So, the first ‘G-phone’ should be here by
Christmas.
These days it’s impossible to examine anything ‘digikal’
without Google coming up. Even if you’re talking about the internet’s
infrastructure - the physical pipes under our roads and oceans that carry all
the data - you’ll come across the big G since it’s a major investor in the new
super-fat pipes being laid to cope with its growth.
But it’s obvious why the company would put some of its [endless
supply of] cash behind such a project: the bigger the internet’s capacity, the more
people can use the web more often, the more search traffic it generates, the
more money it makes.
Less obvious is an apparent move into mobile phone
manufacture. The answer tells us just how clever Google really is. It identified
the mobile market as the most serious opportunity for growth for the web (and
particularly search) years ago. But, after seeking to chivvy along the sector, it
saw that advanced mobile services were being let down in the most fundamental
area of all: usable devices.
It also saw that the key to this was the lack of a standard
operating system, one that could allow handset manufacturers and software
developers to build their own products and services from the same starting
point, just as Windows has done for PCs for the past twenty years. So, it
decided to take action. It asked a load of disparate partners to join hands to
build a standard operating system around which the mobile market could then
develop.
Its problem is that, in the meantime, Apple came along and –
as is its wont – did entirely its own thing. The iPhone was possible because Apple
owns and houses device manufacture, operating system and software development in
one place. The G1 will struggle to compete in terms of design and usability
because it is, literally, built by committee.
But, it also has its advantages. Android – as a project - has
the support of many incumbent players in the mobile space and it’s hard to overstate
just how tricky life can be in the mobile sector without it. And it has Google,
the de facto operating system of the web. If it can translate its model
successfully for mobile, then the G1 and all the other G-phones that follow will
become the most useful devices by virtue of their synergy with that model.
Google’s strategic mission is clear: to build the dominant
traction of the new, mobile desktop over which, in the ‘immobile’ world, it still
has to fight Microsoft. But, the joyful thing is that, if at the end of it all
G-Phones turn out to be dogs, none of that strategic insight will mean a jot.
Rarely has so much rested on favourable electronics reviews but then maybe that’s
why Google thought it best to share the responsibility.
Android and T-Mobile G1's Five Most Obnoxious Flaws
Video of the T-Mobile G1 Google Android Phone
Google enters
the mobile market with iPhone rival
