Analyst: Google Building Software, Not Cell Phone

[engine]

Google Inc. is building software to run services on cell phones rather than gearing up to build its own phone, as many industry sources have speculated, one Wall Street analyst said on Thursday.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a research note to clients that Google appears to be building software for Web search on cell phones and location-finding services to work with Apple Inc.'s iPhone and other cell phones.

"We believe Google is working with, not against, Apple in the mobile world," Munster said.

Analyst: Google Building Software, Not Cell Phone [reuters.com]

[edited by: engine at 8:57 am (utc) on Mar. 23, 2007]

[dillonstars]

This is mentioned in the article discussed here [webmasterworld.com]. Google are working with Orange (and probably other service providers in other countries) to bring an HTC built but Google branded phone to the market.

I wonder if their software will run on other mobile operating systems (symbian, windows mobile, OSX iPhone) or if they are building their own operating system entirely.

[jtara]

As long as they stick to GSM phones, (which I assume they will) they can just do this in Java and be OS-agnostic.

For CDMA phones (Sprint, Verizon in the U.S.) there is no Java with Verizon, and I don't think Java with Sprint has access to GPS data.

It's a big ho-hum. They are just doing what many other software vendors have been doing for years. They will be competing with companies that have a great deal more experience than they do.

[vincevincevince]

I'm sure Google are experienced enough to buy in what expertise or companies they need when they need them.

[oldpro]

G Phone...cool

Wonder how long before Google trademarks the letter "G"?

[gibbergibber]

This completely contradicts what a Google executive actually said. She said they were working on a phone aimed at emerging markets.

Apple's iPhone is $600 and as such aimed at the rich world, not emerging markets.

[dillonstars]

This completely contradicts what a Google executive actually said. She said they were working on a phone aimed at emerging markets.

Unless they said they were exclusively doing this, it doesn't contradict anything. They may well be doing both!

[auroinf0]

thats wonderful and is a better idea indeed.

If they build phones then they have limited reach but if they build software for all phones then they can reach everywhere [:)]

[herb]

LG Electronics and Google Team Up to Enhance the Mobile Experience

Seoul, Mar 28 (Korea Newswire)-- LG Electronics (LG), a leading worldwide provider of advanced wireless handsets and accessories, and Google today announced a global collaboration to pre-install Google’s services on millions of LG mobile phones

Through this new partnership, LG and Google will jointly market LG-Google handsets, then further extending their collaboration to develop digitalized home in the future. LG plans to launch mobile handsets pre-installed with Google and products and service for the next few years with at least ten new handsets in 2007.

Korea News Wire [koreanewswire.co.kr]

Google Calling

[mattglet]

How many people jumped on LG's bandwagon?