The Google phone is here. What’s next?

by Jeff Dorsch, October 2nd, 2008, 7:00 am

Last week’s introduction of the T-Mobile G1 smart phone was the first rollout of a wireless phone designed with the open-source Android mobile device software tools created by Google. T-Mobile USA will make the G1 available October 22, and the phone will be marketed worldwide by T-Mobile International.

The G1 is made by a Taiwanese company, HTC Corp., and is built around an applications processor chipset designed by QUALCOMM. This is the first consumer product to emerge from Google’s formation of the Open Handset Alliance last year. It won’t be the last.

What the search giant has done is something that could ultimately loosen the stranglehold that wireless communications carriers have on American consumers. For years, AT&T Mobility, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and the like were the gatekeepers for the US mobile phone market — deciding which handsets would be sold and at what prices, dictating service plans, and keeping monthly bills high. The wireless handset makers (principally LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Ericsson) and consumers were completely at their mercy.

The Apple iPhone helped crack the wall of wireless communications. While it initially went with just one carrier in the US, AT&T, Apple broke the rules by selling the iPhone in its own retail stores, and at prices it determined. The new iPhone 3G backslides a bit on the price-setting issue, with AT&T getting more power on that point as it locks iPhone buyers into two-year service contracts.

The Open Handset Alliance helps break the grip of the wireless carriers. Android-based mobile phones will go the iPhone one better by offering an open-source applications “store” that won’t be under the control of one company (not Google, nor any other), as Apple’s App Store is. Where it’s leading is the day when you can buy a wireless phone anywhere you like, such as Best Buy or Wal-Mart, and then pick which wireless carrier you want to use. It won’t be a “take it or leave it” proposition, which is what you get from the wireless carriers these days, and that will be a better day for consumers — not only in the US, but around the world, in time.