Mountain View, California — In its latest attempt to make headway in the lucrative mobile market around the globe, search engine titan Google Inc. is developing its own proprietary Android smartphone dubbed as “Nexus One,” to be released in early 2010 without a mobile carrier partner, marks a new push by the company to take on Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. in the smart-phone market, analysts said.
Google, confirmed the announcement in a blog post this weekend on the Google Mobile blog, and Google engineers around the world are covertly distributed an Android handset to company employees for testing — known in the internal circle as “Nexus One”.
According to numerous reports over the weekend, the company is focusing on the mobile market as growth in its search-advertising business on desktop computers are slowing down.
Rumours of so-called “Googlephones” have been prevalent since 2005
The company is deliberately avoiding a deal with major mobile operators – and proposes selling the unlocked handset itself online. Though sales would bypass the networks, customers would still need to have a contract or pay-as-you-go agreement if they wanted to use the handset’s ordinary phone functions.
Phone makers such as Motorola Inc. and HTC Corp. already offer handsets that run on Google’s Android operating system. Introducing its own device gives Google more control over how the hardware and software works together, and escalates competition for Apple, said Ben Schachter, an analyst at San Francisco-based Broadpoint AmTech Inc.
The device has a touch screen like the iPhone, and users can search the Web by speaking search terms.
“If all of a sudden everyone is jumping on the Internet via their mobile device, Google needs to make sure it has an influence on that,” Schachter said yesterday in an interview. “They need to make sure they have influence on how the mobile Web will develop.” He recommends buying Google stock and does not own it.
The Android phone, which has been built by Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC, manufacturer of the T-Mobile G1, HTC Hero and T-Mobile myTouch 3G, and may be available for sale as early as next year over the internet. No carrier has been announced for the device.
According to various reports over the web indicates that Google would responsible exclusively for the design of the phone and is exploring new ways to deliver handsets into the hands of consumers — possibly challenging mobile carrier partners in the process and shaking up the business model of the mobile industry.
We recently discovered the concept of a mobile lab, which is an instrument that incorporates groundbreaking hardware from a partner with software that operates on Android to evaluate with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. The software — which is obtainable for free — is part of an aggressive strategy Google hopes will help it force its way into the mobile phone market, which is widely seen by many in the technology industry as the next major frontier.
Introducing its own handset reflects Google’s effort to expand advertising sales on mobile devices, a market that may grow to $2 billion to $3 billion by 2013 in the U.S., up from less than $1 billion now, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Last month, Google announced plans to acquire AdMob Inc., for $750 million, a mobile-phone advertising startup backed by Google investor Sequoia Capital.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, first disclosed that it was working on a phone in a blog posting on Dec. 12, saying that employees were using the device to provide feedback.
“At Google, we are continually experimenting with new products and technologies, and often ask employees to test these products for quick feedback and suggestions for improvements in a process we call dogfooding,” wrote Mario Querioz, the company’s London-based vice president of product management.
“Unfortunately, because dogfooding is a process exclusively for Google employees, we cannot share specific product details.”
Katie Watson, a spokeswoman for Google, declined to comment beyond the blog posting. HTC Chief Financial Officer Cheng Hui- ming, and public relations official Maggie Cheng didn’t answer calls.