Google Phone & Windows Phone
With all the news about a Google phone coming I thought I would share an interesting side effect of the phone’s arrival. Whatever the phone may be whether it be completely designed from scratch by Google or just an HTC phone with a custom Android version and labelled as the Google Phone makes no different for the mobile market.
The thing here is that Google have their Android mobile OS that they want hardware vendors and carriers to support to make it the best rival to the iPhone; which is exactly the same as Microsoft’s, albeit slower, approach to the mobile market. If Google have their own branded phone running Android (as is rumoured) it’ll put them in direct competition with those aforementioned hardware vendors who support Android. This wouldn’t affect consumers hugely but for business why would a hardware vendor support the latest and greatest version of Android it can provide when Google are providing an even better version with all the marketing that will go along with it.
Obviously to have Google effectively competing with itself is very silly and would see some vendors and carriers focus less, if not stop supporting/selling, Android. It is my understanding that this is the very reason why Microsoft have not released their own phone.
There are two outcomes I can see from this, either Google focuses completely on its own phone and lets the Android OS for OEMs fizzle out. They may have only ever released Android in its current state to have an extensive feedback program, get a lot of apps written for it and to get people used to it. Or Google will use its phone to ensure that vendors keep the software on their phones up to date to stay competitive and stop the older versions being neglected. It is entirely possible that Google want to have their Phone and keep Android in the market on a wide range of hardware, I just don’t think that approach will benefit the businesses involved.
What this could mean for Microsoft is that they can let Google experiment with having branded phone whilst providing the market with an OS. If this proves successful I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Microsoft phone within a few years, provided Windows Mobile 7 takes off. Interestingly though we are still expecting Microsoft’s Project Pink to come into fruition which could be a Microsoft branded phone not running on Windows Mobile which, although being a similar situation, could prove to be a success for all involved; the phone(s) wouldn’t be in direct competition with hardware running Windows Mobile.
I’m looking forward to what the Google Phone will mean to the mobile market and hopefully some news about Windows Mobile 7 within the next couple of months.
On a side note all this “news” about Windows Mobile 7 not launching until this time next year with a beta sometime in the first half of 2010 is not news, its been known for at least a couple of months now. Whenever the beta comes out I’m looking forward to being able to play with test it on my HD2.
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