That’s the latest granule of Google phone gossip to grace the grapevine, tumbling this time from the pages of Slashphone. Word (apparently from India) is that there’ll be a press announcement in two weeks, and that the phone itself could launch in a month. Former: maybe. Latter: pretty bloody unlikely.
Click here to read the Wall Street Journal’s thoughts on the whole Google phone matter.
Update: more on the Google Phone here.
hard to see how this would work out financially for Google. It’s hardly a hardware company is it?
The ‘Google Phone’, if the WSJ article and other rumours are correct, is more like a software platform — an operating system and a set of technical standards. Google is said to be partnering with a number of handset manufacturers to create Google-branded phones running this new platform. The standard sounds pretty good — most of the features that you’d want on a next-gen phone.
Financially, it’s all about mobile advertising, which is thought to be about to explode. See, once a marketeer has a profile of you, adverts sent to or viewed on your mobile can be very specifically targeted. Mobile ads could be extremely valuable to Google, and that’s why it wants to get into the mobile market. And with HSDPA, HSUPA and WiMAX about to change the way we browse on the go, plus DVB-H coming to bring true live mobile TV to Europe, the ways we can be advertised to are about to become much richer and more interesting.