Tag Archives: Gphone

G1, Gphone, Tphone – what will you call your Google phone?

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Finally the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Or as Reuters informs us, T-Mobile USA introduces Google-powered phone.

T-Mobile USA, a Deutsche Telekom AG unit, will sell the first phone powered by Google Inc’s Android operating system under the brand name T-Mobile G1, said its partner Amazon.com Inc on Tuesday. The phone, made by Taiwan’s HTC Corp <2498.TW>, is seen as Google’s answer to Apple Inc’s iPhone and is the Web search leader’s biggest push yet in the cell phone market. The G1 phone has a touch-sensitive screen, a computer-like keyboard, Wi-Fi connections and includes most Google applications and services, including Google Maps with StreetView, Gmail and YouTube. The new phone will feature Android Market, where customers can find and download applications to expand and personalize their phone.

The Google phone certainly looks very attractive. However they should have listened to Marty Weintraub. His advice is to Think SEO Before You Name Your New Company! So T-Mobile USA comes up with the name, .. wait for it, .. dah-dah, T-Mobile G1. It’s hardly catchy.

It would appear that Google has decided not to go with a branding strategy here. We will be seeing Google powered phones with all manner of names. For a company that has just released Google Chrome, which encourages us all to search for the name with its Omnisearch box, it is somewhat paradoxical.

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Google Gphone. Which One?

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The Google Gphone is coming. The Gphone is coming. But what exactly will it look like. TechCrunch opined a month ago that Gphone may really happen, and the Ammunition Group may be designing it. That goes against the more prevalent view that Google will be backing an open source mobile operating system that could finally break the carriers’ stranglehold on the mobile market. That stems from their involvement in the Open Handset Alliance and Android.

Now the New York Times seems assured that T-mobile will offer the first mobile phone with Google software. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October.

Apparently Google is eager to get the Android platform on phones quickly because it thinks that the mobile Web is vital to the long-term growth of its digital advertising business. “We can make more money on mobile than we do on the desktop, eventually,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in an interview on CNBC this week.

Daniel Langendorf feels that Google should have developed its own Gphone.

In his Gphone fantasy, Google forms its Mobile Dream Team and works closely with the world’s leading cell phone manufacturers. Maybe they come up with two form factors — one with a BlackBerry-like keyboard, one all-touch like the iPhone. They establish a consistent Gphone design language that can be executed between manufacturers.

That does not seem to be happening.

Going out on a limb, I have often wondered whether the Google Gphone will be a very cheaply available mobile phone that can help to reduce the digital divide. That would certainly be dear to the heart of Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. You would have to read between the lines of his most recent pronouncement for confirmation of that.

We’re nearing the tipping point for mobile computing to deliver timely, geographically and socially relevant information.

Closer to home, we’re at the cusp of a truly global internet that will bring people closer together and democratise access to information. We are all free to innovate on the net every day and we should look forward to more people around the world enjoying that freedom.

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How Will Advertising Influence Mobile Web Growth?

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Advertising will clearly play a major role in the growth of the mobile web, both in terms of consumer demand and in terms of who are the competitive suppliers. Some are very bullish about the likely growth. For example in an upbeat article in the Bangkok Post, Jeff Teh, a senior research analyst at Frost & Sullivan, is quoted as follows, ”Mobile advertising has the potential to become more successful than internet advertising as the delivery medium is more immediate and personal. ‘The mobile audience in Asia is indeed larger and more immediately reachable than the online users, and with the increasing ubiquity of Internet access over mobile handsets, the web browsing experience is available to a large new audience.”

On the other hand as eMarketer points out, mobile users are easy to annoy and don’t want mobile advertising (hat-tip to Kate Trgovac). According to a study by Web Visible and Nielsen//NetRatings, nearly three-quarters of US Internet users think they are overexposed to advertising. That perception is carrying over into mobile marketing. Almost two-thirds of respondents to a Maritz Research survey of Generation Y consumers said they were unlikely or definitely unlikely to subscribe to texted retail offers sent to their handsets.

This may explain why Bena Roberts finds that Google Adsense for the mobile web does not seem to be attracting advertisers. She also points out that as of now Google is being somewhat cavalier in the way it treats its AdSense mobile advertisers. Thanks to William Slawski for bringing my attention to this expert blogger.

The present structure for mobile advertising does not seem to satisfy any of the stakeholders. Forbes has an interesting take on this in asking the question, “Will Google Crush The iPhone?” The article suggests that it is dissatisfaction with the ability of today’s phones to carry targeted advertising–rather than a thirst for software-licensing revenues or desire to build cool gadgets–that is pushing Google to take on the mobile-phone market according to industry sources. Google’s mission now is clearly to be a publisher of advertising. With its own Gphone, it will clearly be in a position to maximize revenues from mobile advertising.

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Does GOOG411 Lead The Way On The Mobile Web?

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Gphone, a voice- controlled mobile device?

We have previously suggested that eventually we would all be Talking Our Way Around The Mobile Web. Doing any serious navigation on a cell phone keyboard is unpleasant. Cell phones are designed to work with sound. Of course there are challenges in understanding voices against a noisy background. Nevertheless it seems the only viable long-term solution.

The opening keynote speaker at SpeechTEK 2007 may have presaged some powerful support for this view. SpeechTEK brings together the people who build those telephone voice response systems that are becoming a ubiquitous part of our lives. The speaker, Mike Cohen, Google’s speech technology group manager, focused primarily on his company’s speech-powered mobile program, GOOG411. Cohen was previously with Nuance, the speech technology powerhouse.

Cohen noted that there are nearly twice as many mobile phone users worldwide (2.76 billion) as there are PC users (1.56 billion). Clearly developers must find a way to expand information-gathering technology to cell phones and PDA devices. When searching on the mobile Web, users want specific information fast. To tackle this challenge, Cohen suggested speech technology has an advantage over traditional means of data entry.

Cohen underlined the importance of keeping an “obsessive focus on the end-user.” If and when the Google Gphone (GooPhone) appears, that end-user focus will undoubtedly be predominant. If speech technology is the way this is achieved, the Gphone will have an even bigger impact on how the mobile Web develops than we have seen with the Apple iPhone.

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Online Walled Gardens Are Tough To Maintain

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Walled Gardens Restrict Choices.

Walled Gardens have always been tough to maintain. Those outside may have an appetite for what is inside but may be turned off by the associated fees. Those inside may hanker for the freedom to seamlessly wander both inside and outside the walls.

There were already signs that the walls were tumbling down and the latest Wall Street Journal article, Breaking Down the Walls Of Phones’ Web Gardens, lists a number of the reasons for this. The article perhaps places too much emphasis on the browser issues, although clearly the Opera Mini, the Apple iPhone and the Microsoft Deep Fish when it arrives, are all weakening the walls.

If anything the article attaches too much weight to current events and not enough to future developments. Current website design is too influenced by the current situation where the Mobile Web is only a fraction of the regular Web. Most web designers settle for an optimal design for a desktop PC and accept that the user experience will be inferior on a mobile device. Given that the mobile web will grow much more strongly than the regular Internet, this practice will have to change.

Many websites will have specifically-designed mobile versions, often on a dotMobi domain, that will provide a superior user experience. The other major influence here will be the launch of the Google Gphone. Although there seems to be almost ‘Harry Potter’ type secrecy about this, the business logic for it seems inescapable. When the Mobile Web adjusts to accommodate the Gphone reality, those walls around the phones’ web gardens will not long survive.

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