Google to flog unlocked phones in January

And will tie-up with T-Mobile

By Joe Fay, 15th December 2009

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T-Mobile has been fingered as the preferred US operator for the Google phone when it launches in January, while the search giant will also punt an unlocked version to run on any network.

The phone could be available through the operator as early as January 5, Reuters reports. Google clearly thinks it is now powerful enough to ignore the traditional Christmas phone giving period and drop a premium device on the market when most people are skint.

News of the Google branded Googlephone broke over the weekend, with Google confirming on its own blog that it handed out prototypes to employees on Friday. The Android-powered handset is built by HTC - so, really not that different from the current T-Mobile/Android/HTC set-up for the first Google-powered handset.

But this will be a Google branded device - though for now it appears to have multiple codenames, including Nexus One, Dream and Passion.

According to Reuters, as well as pushing the device through T-Mobile, Google will also sell an unlocked version, meaning the Googleplex could sprawl on to other phone networks.

Reuters quoted a source "familiar with the matter", who claimed that "Apple had a phone so hot it changed the business model and got operators to agree to revenue sharing. This is going to change the business too."

But the business may be changing either way - in the US anyway.

The expected launch comes as the FCC reviews the mobile industry in the US, with the exclusive tie-ups beloved of Apple for its iPhone reportedly under the microscope.

So, once again, it seems Google is setting itself at odds with its Silicon Valley neighbour. This time, the battleground is in your pocket.

Google's handing out of the Dream/Nexus One/Passion comes just weeks after it denied it planned to punt a phone directly to consumers. Not that that should stop anyone believing what the search giant says. ®

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COMMENTS

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Highly Rated

Posted Tuesday 15th December 2009 13:52 GMT

DJTachyon

Dream is the G1

The "Dream" is the HTC name of the T-Mobile G1. Please don't confuse your facts.

Posted Tuesday 15th December 2009 20:59 GMT

Ebeneser

You can pretend all you want

but as the first poster pointed out, there's a lot going on here. People who dismiss it with the 'nothing to see here/seen it all before/move along' are completely missing the point.

Google are pretty much gunning for everyone, Apple, Microsoft, Mobile carriers and anyone else that gets in the way.

Apple have a very nice phone, thousands of mainly useless apps, a hamstrung excuse for an operating systems, and a pretty limited wider infrastructure. If they need to trumpet things like 'push notification' which are fairly basic OS/networking capabilities, then they can rightly claim the title of 'MS-DOS of smartphone systems'.

Microsoft have a mobile operating system lead that they've thrown away and a mixture of web based infrastructure that tries to tie you to the desktop, because they're too short sighted to see what's coming. A bit like when the internet first appeared and MS jumped on the bandwagon a couple of years later by retrofitting their existing apps then trying to re-invent/subvert the existing internet standards in their own image.

Google have a cloud which is designed to deliver anything anywhere and scale to ridiculous levels. If you've been watching what they've been doing recently, its scary the speed with which they can enter and change markets, and its all based around the cloud and mobile technology. Recent examples are Google Navigator for Android - Tomtom 10% share devaluation, UK houses for sale on Google Maps - Rightmove 10% share devaluation - Google voice search/Google Goggles, Public DNS servers, partnerships in underwater high-speed data cables, threats of mobile manufacturers/carriers and this is all in the past month or so. Now you've got Google moving to create their vision of connecting people to their cloud, via Android mobile phones, your got to be pretty dense if you can't see how important this is to their strategy. Think it will fail? Yeah ... right.

Posted Wednesday 16th December 2009 15:20 GMT

ForthIsNotDead