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Google hits Mobile Market with the G1 By: Jonathan Bille  |
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 Well the long awaited event has happened. T-Mobile USA has announced the first phone to use Google’s Android OS. The new phone, called the G1 and informally called the “Google Phone” is the first mobile phone to be powered by the internet search giant Google, and it is expected to be a strong competitor to the very popular Apple iPhone.
The new Google Phone is expected to be available in stores around October 22 and is expected to sell for around $179.00. It is not expected to hit British markets until November and the European market as a whole until early in 2009.
Hardware features of the new Google Phone include a 480 x320 screen, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 3.1MP camera, 1 GB MicroSD card, a slide out hardware QWERTY keyboard, and 5 hrs of talk time on one charge. Some of the software features include: GMail push email, Word, PDF and Excel readers, Amazon mobile music store, YouTube, Android Market and Google Maps.
Anyway you look at it the G1 is definitely going to shake things up in the world of mobile phones. Interest has been growing in the G1 ever since Google started to discuss their Android software platform last year.
But perhaps the biggest thing the G1 has going for it is mystery. No one is really sure what the G1 is capable of. Everyone assumes that it will be competent at browsing the internet and at sending and receiving emails, but when it comes down to it, no one knows for sure, what innovations may have been incorporated into the G1.
Google knows it’s a competitive market. Even though the G1 is a highly awaited release, the folks at Google know that they have a lot of work to do if they are going to be contenders in this highly competitive market. It is their hope to sell somewhere in the area of 400,000 phones this year. That would give them a 4 percent market share of the “smart” mobile phone business, and would be a serious introduction of their first mobile product.
Although there are a lot of techies who have been waiting for the G1’s release, I don’t get the sense that it is a highly anticipated by the general public, as the iPhone was when it was first introduced. But regardless of public anticipation, the G1 is sure to shake up the ever changing mobile phone industry.
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