The “Google Phone” is real, judging by the multitude of photos available and tweets by lucky staff recipients, but why is it necessary?
Does Google want to change the cellphone industry? Is it worried that Android adoption will stall? I would say no on both counts. The Google phone is necessary because the company feels an Apple-like need to control the user experience.
We have seen this from Google already in its introduction of the Chrome browser and announcement of the Chrome operating system. Both were created to load web pages and applications faster and make them more central to the user experience, thereby benefiting Google’s search-advertising cash cow.
Google also likes end-to-end control of its own processes. It has made its own hardware for its search business – it thinks it knows best in putting together the servers that process search queries.
Google, like Apple, feels it has the ability to deliver its own complete and distinctive service to users. But while Apple has never licensed its iPhone operating system and interface to any other handset makers, Google has done so from the start with Android.
Google’s move into the territory of handset makers will not therefore cause the same alarm as the iPhone did. But it will still make phone makers investing in Android feel that the playing field is no longer level, with the Google Phone being optimised for the latest improvements in Android.
At least there is no suggestion that the Google Phone will be free, unlike other disruptive services, from Google Analytics to Google Voice.
According to a Reuters report that appears to be sourced from Deutsche Telekom, Google will sell its phone at a subsidised price through T-Mobile from next month, with the usual two-year contract.
It looks very appealing from the photos and specifications reported – similar to HTC’s HD2 Windows Mobile phone, with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and large screen. But it will be one of a growing number of Android phones and not a game-changer in any sense.
Ashok Kumar, NorthEast Securities analyst, does not see it as a one-off – there will be a series of Google phones, as well as a Google netbook running Chrome, he says.
That would make sense too, especially to a company of Google’s relentless logic.
