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Google unveils mobile phone, on sale in October
2008-09-23
NEW YORK (AFP) - Internet search giant Google launched its long-awaited mobile phone on Tuesday, unveiling a handset developed with telecom carrier T-Mobile to compete with rival Apple's hot-selling iPhone. The T-Mobile G1, the first mobile device powered by Google's open-source Android software, will be available in stores in the United States on October 22 and will cost 179 dollars, 20 dollars cheaper than the iPhone 3G. Cole Brodman, T-Mobile chief technology and innovation officer, called the G1, built by the Taiwanese firm HTC, a "game-changing" device for Web surfing which will "power a new mobile Internet of the future." The G1, which is a bit thicker but narrower than an iPhone and comes in three colors, black, white and brown, will go on sale in Britain in early November and in other European countries served by T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, in early 2009. The G1 offers many of the features of the iPhone and Research in Motion's popular BlackBerry including a touch screen similar to that of the iPhone, a trackball for navigation, high-speed Internet browsing, Wi-Fi, e-mail, instant messaging and SMS texting. It also has a Global Positioning System (GPS), a 3.0-megapixel camera with photo-sharing capability and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a feature lacking on the iPhone. Unlike the iPhone, however, the G1 cannot shoot video. But in a direct challenge to Apple's iTunes, the entire library of Internet retail giant Amazon's MP3 music store is available for purchase on the G1, more than six million songs. The new phone has, unsurprisingly, been closely integrated with Google applications such as Google Maps and G-Mail and can play videos from YouTube, the video-sharing site purchased by Google in 2006. "Google is moving into the mobile devices market not to become yet another mobile phone manufacturer but to enable a large addressable market for its services and applications," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner Consulting. "Google's strategy is all about broad reach for their services," added Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. "It's just the first step in a long strategic voyage for Google." Google hopes the free Linux-based Android software powering the G1 will eventually become the dominant operating system for mobile phones. "Android has the potential to become the de facto operating system for Linux and we expect sales to reach around 10 per cent of the smartphone market in 2011," said Roberta Cozza, another Gartner analyst. The open source Android software and ability of outside developers to write applications for the device is seen as a major selling point by Google and its partners. Applications for the iPhone, for example, are tightly controlled by Apple and mobile phone operating systems such as those of Microsoft and global mobile phone market leader Nokia are proprietary. "It's very exciting for me as a computer geek to have a phone that I can play with and modify," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who made a surprise appearance at the launch event with fellow co-founder Larry Page. G1 users can access the Android Market, where they can download software applications from developers around the world. Google announced the formation in November 2007 of a 34-member group called the "Open Handset Alliance" to develop Android, including China Mobile, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Telefonica, LG and eBay. Google's share price soared 7.38 percent to 437.52 dollars an hour after the launch of the G1 but it ended the day down 0.2 percent at 429.27 dollars.
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