Google Phone

If the whole FCC auction malarkey has got you confused, then thankfully more analysts are stepping in to lay out exactly what might be on offer for existing carriers, potential new carriers and customers alike.  And while normally the correct name for a group of analysts is “a gobshite” for once they’re actually helping push through some clarity.  One thing’s for sure, Google’s preliminary toe-dip into cellular waters - and their ostentatious $4.6bn credit card waving - has got plenty of people talking.

So what do we know already?  Well, if you want to get pantomime about it, there are the “good guys” and the “bad guys”; Google, Frontline Wireless and others would like to think they sit firmly in the former camp, while existing carriers such as AT&T and Verizon lament in the latter.  Google would have you believe that a new paradigm of wireless usage is at stake, breaking down so-called “open access” into four interconnected chunks.

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So, the cheapest I know of, for a cell phone company is Net10 who offers cellular service for a mere $.10 per minute. The cheapest cell phone has recently just be awarded to Motorola, lets just say I recently bought a Motorola Cingular (now AT&T) GoPhone for a little less than $20 and it came with $10 worth of free minutes. So, the question is, how much of Google’s phone/services could they afford to offer for free, if advertising is factored in?

So, that phone I bought for $20, yeah, that’s not going to be able to do enough to satiate Google. I think, the Motorola Razr, not the new Razr2, the original, is both well priced, and well featured to do most of what Google wants (as far as we know). It is also probably the cheapest phone, and thus the most likely to be seen for free, we could possibly see repping the Google name, so these rumors of HTC, Samsung, and LG being in on the deal sound great, but I would be willing to wager that if any one of those companies gets the contract you will have to pay for your Google gPhone phone. I am not saying this is a problem, since if I was getting completely or partially free service I would be far more willing to pay for a nice phone with the Google name on it.

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The Hindustan Times recently had an article written by Puneet Mehrotra, a web strategist, who had a lot of good info, a nice recap, and grouped it all together in a summary in the form of Pro’s, Con’s, and indifferent. One of those things was the nick name for the Google gPhone as the Goophone, which, in my opinion, makes it sound like a device, not from Google Labs, but from Nickelodeon labs.

Anyways, onto what really matters, first, Google has reportedly partnered with Vodafone, Samsung, and LG. Another upside is that if Google were successful with their ad-funded platform that would put Google that much closer to taking down Microsoft, to some that’s good, to some that’s not, me personally, I don’t think Microsoft needs taken down, maybe just knocked down a notch or two, anyways, back to Google’s gPhone.

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Not too long ago Google acquired a couple of companies known for their AJAX based software which allowed for functionality similar to Microsoft’s Word and Excel, except in your web browser. Of all the features already being mentioned as being part of Google’s upcoming gPhone, why not these two?

I mean, they are already naming GMail, Google Maps, and YouTube/Google Video, so why not other apps that have graduated or are a part of the Google Labs? You could use Google Product Search for price comparisons. A personalized Google homepage to increase the efficiency of the time you spend on the WWAN.

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Sprint recently announced that they will be shipping a version of Nokia’s N800 Internet Tablet that will be able to access their 4^th generation WiMAX network. Hopes are high that Sprint’s new network will be widespread enough for a large number of people to make good use of this new iteration of Nokia’s N800.

It would make a lot of sense for some sort of agreement like this to materialize during the design of the phone, as it would require the special WiMAX chips. If Sprint decides to lease bandwidth on its WiMAX network to other carriers it would also make it a more viable option. In a dream world though, Google would just partner with Sprint on this and start making use of all that “dark fiber” Google was buying up a while back.

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With the market for mobile phone accessories estimated to meet or exceed $32 billion this year alone, what implications would a free phone and/or services have on that number? I am sure that when ABI Research did their study they hadn’t expected such a new move in the cell phone industry as free, as in lunch.

Granted the majority of those accessories are for gadgets or attachments that add functionality, but in the interest of protecting their precious devices, most people splurge on a case. Sometimes those cases are just for protection, other times they are just for easier access, often accomplished by adding a belt clip or some sort of other connector for ease of access.

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Well it kind of makes sense, especially since Google is really pushing for open-ness. In that spirit of things it would only be right to go to the predominant open source phone platform right now.

I am somewhat disheartened by the fact that they won’t be utilizing the FIC Neo1973 GTA01 hardware. However they are going to be using the open source OpenMoko platform, just on some different hardware, purported to be being made by HTC.

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This new startup company is offering an optional download to certain customers within the Indiana and Ohio service areas where they receive targeted ads through their cell phone. Mobile Posse is the name of the company providing the advertising system, which instead of inserting banner ads or annoying customers in the middle of doing something, they wait until the phone is idle and send a targeted pop-up ad.

Mobile Posse is rumored to be working with a major carrier here in the US. Some of their ads aren’t just advertisements either; some come in the form of a coupon. I have no clue how you would print that or if the employees at those institutions are trained to accept those types of coupons by just looking at your cell phone. Mobile Posse’s ad system is also a learning one, it starts by getting you age and gender, and from there it begins sending you ads, however if it sends you x number of ads from a certain category and you click on none, it gets the hint you are not interested in that category and stops sending those types of ads to you. So basically it is a targeted ad system.

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Google’s first-born dubbed the Google Phone, gPhone or g-Phone may sport a Linux operating system on a Texas Instrument “Edge” chipset and is likely to available through T-Mobile and Orange in the Spring of 2008, according to unconfirmed reports. Monthly service may even be subsidized by mobile ads.

Furthermore, this big news quietly broke in Singapore, where Jennifer Tan, Reuters subsidiary Anian Research filed a report on July 12. I can’t believe it took nearly four weeks for this news to break wide open!

Tan cited “industry sources,” “U.S. sources,” and “manufacturing and component supply chain sources” in backing her assertion that after year-long delays finding a manufacturer, Google contracted Taiwan-based smartphone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) to design its phone hardware. HTC is best-known for its Windows Mobile smartphones, however, and Tan offered no conjecture about who might supply the phone’s Linux-based operating system.

Additional details reported by Tan include:

* The G-Phone will have a large color screen with a predictive Qwerty keypad to simplify Google searching
* A follow-up 3G-capable model (Edge is considered “2.75G”) will use a Qualcomm chipset
* Scheduled for production in Q1 of 2006, the Google phone will hit retail shelves next spring
* Call minutes and text messages are to be funded by “mobile advertising”
* Google originally hoped to launch a phone this year, but was delayed by “difficulties in nailing down a deal with a handset maker”
* T-Mobile will carrier the phone in the U.S., along with (possibly) Orange in other markets

Obviously, Google isn’t going to comment on this. So we’ll just have to wait for the Google Phone Beta program to start where Google hand out phones to beta testers; similar to the Gmail beta program. Sign me up baby!

CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo is expected to present a special report on Google Phone today, August 3, 2007.

We’ll try to TiVo the presentation and share it here on Google-Phone.com in case anyone misses it.

[Update]  I didn’t see this special report.  Did anyone see it?  If so, please send me a link to tipline@gmail.com.