Google phone rumours heat up
Google is expected to announce new software and services which will let handset makers bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year, media reports have said.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with the matter as saying the much speculated on announcement is expected to come within the next two weeks. No one at Google could immediately be reached for comment.
Google has moved rapidly over the past year to extend its reach beyond text-based, pay-per-click web search advertising into a variety of new markets, including online video, television, radio and print advertising.
Google has also expanded into enterprise software, which has traditionally been Microsoft's domain.
According the Wall Street Journal, the Google-powered phones are expected to meld several of its applications, including Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail.
The ground-breaking part of the plan, according to the newspaper, is Google's aim to make the phone's software "open," right down to the operating system which controls applications and interacts with hardware.
This will grant independent software developers access to the tools they need to build additional phone features, the Wall Street Journal said.
World number two mobile phone maker Samsung has revealed a number of significant new additions to its mobile phone range.
In a global launch event at the British Museum in London, the company announced new business handsets, new phones based on the Symbian S60 operating system and interface, and two new "Internet" phones.
The announcement came alongside the official European launch of the widely trailed G800 camera phone and a new music phone, the Serenata, developed jointly with Bang & Olufsen.
The "candy bar" i550 and slider i560 handsets are both based around Nokia's S60 interface and the Symbian 9.2 operating system. Both phones include GPS satellite navigation, as well as 3.2 megapixel cameras and push email.
Samsung's "Internet" phones include the SGH-i780, a BlackBerry-style device with a full QWERTY keyboard, optical joystick, wireless LAN, push email and the Windows Mobile 6 operating system and UMA support for voice over wireless LAN.
The SGH-F700 has a slide-out keyboard as well as a touch-screen interface, and is expected to compete head to head with Apple's iPhone. The F700 has no wireless LAN connections, although both models work on HSDPA networks.
The company also launched a further Symbian-based handset, the SGH-i450, which is optimised for music playback.
Samsung's 207 revenues in Europe amounted to US23bn according to I S Kim, president of Samsung Electronics Europe. The company's mobile business has doubled in the last year, and the Samsung plans further growth by moving from a focus on the high and mid end of the market, to a strategy that includes more entry-level phones.
