It has been all the buzz this weekend. The G-Phone is coming! The G-Phone is coming! What’s this all about? On Friday Google handed out thousands of HTC phones* loaded with a new version of Andriod. Now suddenly Tech Crunch is crowing that they were right! The “G-phone” is coming!
If you slap the Google logo on a Ford Mustang does it suddenly become the Google car? Think about it. In 2007, if Apple had put their logo on an HTC handset, would the media have anointed it the “Apple iPhone?” Or more likely would the media have called BS … Hey you already tried that with the ROKR … Come on, if you’re really serious about mobile software, why don’t you build your own phone? Come to think of it, Steve Jobs already gets it – “People who are really serious about software, should make their own hardware.”
If you take Google at their word, the HTC handsets* they gave out to employees are for a “dog-fooding” exercise – a means for testing a new version of Android.
Is it really a G-Car (G-Phone) or just a Ford Mustang (HTC) with a Google logo?
Thanks to Tech Crunch and the echo-chamber blogosphere, “the G-Phone is coming!” will buzz around the Web for another day or two. No doubt the nastiest denizens of Wall Street will do their best to use the “G-Phone” rumors to knock a few bucks off Apple’s (AAPL) share price. They love buying on the cheap after weak hands let go of their shares.
Then surprise, surprise … a day or two later (after the hedge funds have bought back in) you’ll start to read stories about how an unlocked G-Phone (if it exists) will have to be priced at $599+ and it may have trouble competing with subsidized iPhones ($299 for a 32GB iPhone 3GS). Then you’ll hear that a G-Phone (if it exists) means that Google will be competing against its Android partners (carriers & handset OEMs). Just bought yourself a Verizon (Moto) Droid? Ha ha, what a schmuck! Don’t you know the Android G-phone is coming! So much for “One platform, many devices.”
No one has succeeded in licensing their own software and then competing against their licensee partners. It will start a nasty war and Android will be tarnished in the process. You think Tiger Woods has problems? Wait till all of the carriers and OEMs find out what Google has been up to.
Micheal Gartenberg has an interesting take on the Google Phone > Entelligence: A Google Phone could be the death of Android as does Slate’s Farhad Majoo > The Myth of the Google Phone
*Note: The phones given to Google employees on Friday Dec 10, appear to be the HTC Dragon/Passion albeit a “replicant” with the specs of the Bravo. This HTC phone has been code named “Nexus.” If that sounds familiar, Nexus is the model of androids or “replicants” in the film Blade Runner.
Dog-Fooding
