According to the Observer of London Google, in its continuing efforts to completety take over the world as far as being the middle man between information and people who want it, has held talks with Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC and mobile telecom giant Orange about a multi-billion dollar partnership to create a ‘Google phone‘, or, GoogleBerry, as I like to call it.
Their plans centre on a branded Google phone, which would probably also carry Orange’s logo. The device would not be revolutionary: manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese firm specialising in smart phones and Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), it might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset.
GigaOm has an interesting take on the GoogleBerry that could possibly go on sale in 2008.
Google Phone, if you think about it is a reasonable speculation. Google has been aggressive in developing location based services, has amp-ed up its local search and mapping services. In addition, it has also been mobilizing its applications such as GTalk and GMail. YouTube, the video arm of Google, is beginning to embrace the mobile ecosystem.
Normally, one would not spend too much energy on this bit of news. However, presence of Andy Rubin on Google campus gives us a reason to pause.
Who is Rubin? He was one of the co-founders of Danger, the company that makes the Sidekick devices. He sold his last company, Android to Google for an undisclosed amount of money, and he has been holed up in Mountain View, California campus of Google, doing something.
No one knows what, but since Android was focusing on mobile, it is safe to assume that he just might be involved in Android. Danger, as you might know has become a multimillion dollar business based off the “compress web and take it mobile” technology developed by Rubin and others. Businessweek had reported that Android was working on a cell phone operating system.
Google might be coming out with a phone. Apple is coming out with a phone. RIM is trying to become a player outside of the corporate world. The consumer market for smartphones is starting to heat up and it will be interesting to see how things develop over the coming year.
Do you think that a phone from Google could be free and supported by advertising? Maybe before you are able to make a call, you would have to watch a 10 or 15 second commercial or something.
I don’t know that this would fly in the US. I can’t imagine having to watch a commercial everytime I wanted to make a call.
The ad angle is interesting, but I personally would never settle for that. No one is getting ads onto my phone…I’ll gladly pay more to avoid that.
Also, carriers already offer subsidized pricing on phones, and many phones are offered for free…why would a consumer want to have to suffer through ads on a mobile device?
That being said, if Google comes out with something, then one can expect it be interesting and innovative. It would have to offer more than just the same Google software, like Google maps, that you can download yourself onto any phone. Simply preloading the software doesn’t add that much value.
I am with TK and Thought on this one. The idea almost reminds me of when People PC first hit the scene with a free computer if you ran their ad bar.
Even though people signed up for it, it became so annoying that advertisors started to realize a negative preference of their products and services being advertised.
I think google would be smart enough to develop the phone so that it is not overly annoying with advertising. I think that the ad angle would be less ‘phone’ based on more on using the smartphone capabilities, i.e. internet, calender, task, etc. It’s an ambitious project, but if ESPN can come out with a branded phone, I’m sure Google could as well.
I’ve actually heard somewhere, sorry I cannot remember where, that a company was toying around with the idea of scanning incoming SMS messages and offering contextual ads based on their contents.
As I think about it, Google is already doing this with Gmail and google talk. I am sure that they have this in the back of their minds somewhere.
Stu: ESPN did do this as well, but it failed miserably (even though I thought the phones were kinda cool).
Google will have to come out with some fantastic software on the phone in order for this venture to work.