This week, Verizon put out a comparison chart that outlined all the features that they offer that the T-Mobile G1 does not. The comparison was basically unfair because they are comparing the G1 to an entire service provider with many phones and many features.  A young Australian consumer electronics maker started telling people that he will be launching his own Android-powered handset sometime in the near future. He believes that it will sell very well as the first Android sold in Australia.

This week we were informed that some of the T-Mobile G1 per-orders will be arriving late. All pre-orders made after October 3rd will arrive November 10th at the earliest. Many impatient customers are better off waiting in line on October 22nd to get one on release day. Rumors went around the T-Mobile is prepping their version of the HTC Touch HD to run Android. It seems those rumors go unfounded with the announcement that the Touch HD will not be coming to the US.

From February 8th, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will be running a class in Android software development, as part of a new program centred on phone-based programming.  Led by Professor Hal Abelson, the course comes under the remit of the Computer Science program, and will feature guest instructors including Google’s Rich Miner, ConnectedBit’s Dave Mitchell and Eric Carlson, and MIT’s Rajeev Surati and Andrew Yu.  A broad range of topics will apparently be covered, including Location Based Services which Google has already tipped as the next phase in cellphone use and mobile advertising.

As we reported was in the pipeline in late December last year, Google and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo have reached an agreement whereby Google-powered searches will be the default through the operator’s i-mode portal, keyword based AdWords advertising will be included on search results pages, and handsets will have improved access to Google’s online application suite.  Initially, Google Maps will be preloaded on all handsets and, for those devices with full browsers, Google will be the preset homepage; subsequently Gmail, YouTube and Picasa will all be integrated into the i-mode system.

The long-awaited (and once delayed) FCC auction for the so-called “beach-front” 700MHz wireless band begins today, with the shortlist (that, at 214 members, isn’t all that short) of potential bidders each hoping to take away one of the five blocks of prime spectrum.  Block C is the most hotly contested, due to its breadth (22MHz) and clustered regions, with big-name players including Google, Verizon Wireless and AT&T all tipped to be interested.

Three rounds of bidding will take place each business day, with information about the highest bid - though not the bidder who has placed it - distributed among participants; there is no set end-date, and the auction ends when no further bids are placed.  Each block has a reserve price: block A at $1.81bn; block B at $1.37bn; block C at $4.64bn; block D at $1.33bn; and block E at $904m, and if those figures fail to be met then a second auction will be scheduled with new reserve prices.

After a delay while Google’s engineers attempted to fix the submissions system, the Android Developer Challenge has finally opened for entries.  With a total prize-fund of $10m, the competition has both been lauded and criticised as stimulating software coding and simultaneously encouraging developers to jealously guard their skills.  Challenge I, which will be accepting entries until March 3rd, will offer 50-percent of that jackpot, with fifty winning entries getting a guaranteed $25,000 each and the possibility of supplementary awards - ten of $100,000 and ten of $275,000 - for particularly good applications.

It might just be Seasonal Affective Disorder, but paranoia and dark soothsaying seem to be the moods of the moment with analysts and industry professionals muttering worried concerns about Google’s long-term plans and the state of the open-source market.  While the original Android announcement - of a mobile platform built on open-source foundations that would promote flexibility and perhaps even make good on the “write once, run anywhere” mantra developers have long been promised - prompted excitement, the recent release of LiPS’ open-specifications has reminded everyone of the flipside of flexibility.  Namely, that everybody involved needs to sign up to the same standards and cooperate. 

“It’s unlikely that Android would happen to comply with LiPS 1.0 … At the end of the day, confused customers don’t buy — and confused developers don’t write apps. Then you have a fragmented ecosystem” Bill Hughes, analyst, In-Stat

Android has the traditional carriers unnerved at the prospect of a rapidly evolving business model - unnerved enough for historically closed Verizon Wireless to let down the CDMA drawbridge, even - with open-source software promising to flood the market with low-cost, highly adapted cellular devices and advertising revenue supplanting monthly contracts and expensive add-ons.  Yet some believe this upheaval is merely the beginning; Linux software provider Wind River Systems dispatched their chief marketing officer, John Bruggeman, to talk to ZDNet’s Dana Gardner about not only the advancing role of geo-specific search and advertising, but the future of Android as a platform for mobile devices and the successful software that’s to run on it.

“You’ve got your phone. And, I know physically where that [phone's] IP address is. You are around the corner from Starbucks. Now, is Starbucks going to be willing to pay a premium to get you to drive or walk around the corner? Or, I know you’re sitting in the airport terminal. All the possibilities become very powerful concepts” John Bruggerman, Wind River Systems

With Google already experimenting with mobile adverts, and Microsoft this week launching both banner and text adverts on their MSN Mobile portal, it seems a safe bet that the business model is set to evolve.  Yet as eWeek’s Clint Boulton points out, consumers already consider banners passé and are fearful that the adverts will “clutter the tiny screens” of their devices.  The key difference will be targeting promotional content so that it is both personally and situationally specific enough to be of interest (rather than frustration) to the user, and cost effective to the company funding the advert who is, in effect, subsidising the user’s connection.

Nokia has hit back at Google’s Android platform, with CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo dismissing the Open Handset Alliance’s OS launch with the suggestion that the Finnish company themselves have already trodden much of the software ground Google and partners are currently bringing attention to: “conceptually, we could have made that announcement a long time ago.”  In fact, with their announcement of the Ovi internet-services project - that has recently clinched the support of Vodafone, already a vocal critic of Android - that will combine their music and mapping services, as well as hints of geo-targeted advertising, their position as chief rival to the Google OS seems increasingly cemented.

“Mobile phones have two qualities that PCs don’t have: they’re always with you, and they tell other people where you are” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia

Although there’s nobody claiming that Google has build a platform and an alliance of companies with the expectation that they’ll fail, more people are switching on to the fact that the search giant needn’t necessarily sweep the handset board with Android in order to come out near the top.  As they’ve done in the 700MHz spectrum auction - pushing the FCC to include contract clauses for open-access that will benefit Google no matter whether they win (or even bid) or not - the sheer threat of Android is likely to force rival manufacturers and OS designers to step up their game and, Frank Hayes of TechNewsWorld believes, mimic some of the third-party applications and polished web experience their new competitor is promising.