All Things Digital

Google’s Android mobile platform will become commercially available before year end, just as the company promised. But with one caveat: It will lack some of the features Google (GOOG) first intended. Seems that in order to get Android out the door in time for the holiday shopping season, the company has been forced to defeature it. Google has dropped planned APIs for Bluetooth and Google’s own GTalk instant-messaging service in Android 1.0, according to the Android Developers Blog. Seems there are issues with both APIs that need to be resolved before Google is comfortable releasing them into the wild, and the company couldn’t do that before the end of the year. “… We plain ran out of time,” said Android engineer Nick Pelly. “The Android Bluetooth API was pretty far along, but needs some cleanup before we can commit to it for the SDK. Keep in mind that putting it in the 1.0 SDK would have locked us into that API for years to come.”

Unless you simply kept it in beta for a few years like some of your other products. …

The HTC Dream, the first handset based on Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile platform, has been given the Federal Communications Commission seal of approval. With that last hurdle cleared, the device is ready for market–though it now looks like it may arrive a bit later than expected. A short-term confidentiality request in the documentation HTC filed with the FCC suggests that the Dream will be released in November, not September.

What can we expect from this first Android device? Sadly, the HTC documentation doesn’t offer much detail. Those who claim to have seen it, however, say it will feature a trackball and a screen smaller than the one on the iPhone. They also believe it will offer access to an upcoming T-Mobile (DT) App Store similar to Apple’s (AAPL) App Store for iPhone/iPod Touch applications. The Dream will support push email, but only via Google’s Gmail service. Finally, it will use Google’s advertising platform to serve up ads based on user interests and location. Which, as far as Google is concerned, is the whole point here. “We can make more in mobile than desktop, eventually,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said recently. “The reason is because the mobile device is more targeted. Think about it: You carry your phone with you everywhere. It knows all about you. We can use that to do a very, very targeted ad. Over time, Google will make more money from mobile advertising.”

T-Mobile will soon become the first carrier to offer a phone based on Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile platform. Well, that’s the rumor, anyway. Manufactured by HTC (HTC), the handset is said to feature a touchscreen, a three-megapixel camera and a full five-row keyboard just like the one seen in that YouTube video that’s been making the rounds (see below). It supports 3G connectivity, and, according to those who’ve allegedly seen it, the device is clearly intended to compete against Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, but is “big and bulky” in comparison.

The T-Mobile (DT) handset is expected to price out at $150 and arrive at market in September, as Digital Daily noted in June.

The mobile market is heating up to a roiling boil, isn’t it? This morning Nokia (NOK) said it plans to acquire the 52% of mobile software outfit Symbian that it does not already own in a cash deal valued at about $410 million. But rather than roll up the company’s operations into its own, it’s turning them over to the newly formed Symbian Foundation.

A not-for-profit venture, the Symbian Foundation–which includes Motorola (MOT), Samsung, Sony Ericsson (SNE) and LG Electronics (LGERF.PK)–will steward the Symbian OS as a royalty-free open mobile platform. And that’s a pretty big deal, because Symbian is by far the world’s leading smart-phone software platform. It controls a 60% share of the market with 200 million handsets running its software.

Strategically, the formation of the Symbian Foundation and the opening of the Symbian platform is an aggressive pre-emptive strike against Google (GOOG), its Open Handset Alliance and its open-source Android mobile platform. Perfectly timed too, since Android seems to be falling behind schedule. “It offers us an opportunity to innovate faster on a bigger, united, more widely accepted platform,” Kai Oistamo, head of Nokia’s devices business, told Reuters. “It also enables us to deliver new products, we believe, faster to the market. I’m convinced we will sell more products.”

The Googlefication of the mobile industry will begin a bit later than expected.

When the search giant announced its Android mobile platform last November, it said devices running it would arrive at market by the second half of this year. Well, turns out that deadline was a bit aggressive. Android-based handsets may not be available until the fourth quarter of this year–if Google’s (GOOG) lucky. Because some handset manufacturers are “struggling” to meet even that extended deadline. And at least a few wireless carriers have abandoned plans to launch Android-based handsets this year entirely.

Apparently, a multinational consortium of companies working to develop an open mobile platform–while a wonderful idea in theory–is, in practice, a pain in the ass. Software providers are finding it difficult to develop programs on a platform still going through revisions. Handset manufacturers are having a tough time integrating that software into their devices. And wireless carriers are finding that customizing Android to promote their Internet services isn’t as easy as they’d hoped. “This is where the pain happens,” Andy Rubin, director of mobile platforms at Google, said of this particular phase of development. “We are very, very close.”

Sadly for the Google, the pain to which Rubin refers seems decidedly Android-specific. Developers building applications for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3G, which will launch in early July, seem to be having an easy time of it. So much so that some are prioritizing iPhone apps over their Android counterparts–at least until Android development is painless.

When the first phones based on Google’s Android mobile operating system arrive at market in the second half of 2008, the so-called “Gphone” won’t be among them, says TheStreet.com. Which makes perfect sense really, because Google (GOOG) has never said it was building a Gphone. If anything, it’s said the exact opposite.

During an Android demo this past April, Google’s Steve Horowitz said specifically “I’m here to tell you there is actually no GPhone,” echoing a similar point that Google CEO Eric Schmidt had been forced to make over and over and over again during a conference call held to discuss the OS.

Q: So if this is not the Gphone, when will we see the Gphone, and what will it be?

Eric Schmidt: We’re not announcing anything, but this is the platform for building a Gphone. It starts a whole wave of innovation …

Q: Does that mean there will be NO Google phone you can buy?

ES: Imagine not just one Gphone, but a thousand Gphones as a result of the partnerships … the many other people who will be joining the open initiative. We forgot to tell you that it’s available next week, and the terms are the broadest in the industry.

Q: ………..Gphone?

ES: We are not announcing a Google phone.

Q: Eric, I want to go back to the Gphone–what’s the deal?

ES: The deal is we don’t pre-announce products… if there were to be a Gphone, it would run Android…”

Google (GOOG) won the recent wireless spectrum auction by not winning. That’s the claim of Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecom and media counsel, and Joseph Faber, its corporate counsel. In a post to Google’s Public Policy Blog Thursday, the two attorneys explained that the company’s main goal in bidding in the auction was, as many suspected, to make ensure the $4.6 billion reserve price that would activate open access rules was met. “Google’s top priority heading into the auction was to make sure that bidding on the so-called ‘C Block’ reached the $4.6 billion reserve price that would trigger the important ‘open applications’ and ‘open handsets’ license conditions,” the two wrote, adding that the Google wasn’t opposed to winning the valuable swath of spectrum. “We were also prepared to gain the nationwide C Block licenses at a price somewhat higher than the reserve price; in fact, for many days during the early course of the auction, we were the high bidder,” Whitt and Faber explained. “But it was clear, then and now, that Verizon Wireless (VZ) ultimately was motivated to bid higher (and had far more financial incentive to gain the licenses).”

Really. You don’t say?

Anyway, Google’s lucky it got what it wanted from the auction without really spending anything. “If Google had won a license, there was only downside risk for them,” said Gregory L. Rosston, a former F.C.C. official and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. “Now they can just spend $1 million a year on a law firm to ensure Verizon lives up to the openness requirements.”

Q: So if this is not the Gphone, when will we see the Gphone, and what will it be?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: We’re not announcing anything, but this is the platform for building a Gphone. It starts a whole wave of innovation …

Q: Does that mean there will be NO Google phone you can buy?

ES: Imagine not just one Gphone, but a thousand Gphones as a result of the partnerships … the many other people who will be joining the open initiative. We forgot to tell you that it’s available next week, and the terms are the broadest in the industry.

Q: ………..Gphone?

ES: We are not announcing a Google phone.

Q: Eric, I want to go back to the Gphone–what’s the deal?

ES: The deal is we don’t pre-announce products… if there were to be a Gphone, it would run Android.

–Excerpt from Google’s Nov. 5 Android analyst call

Google and Dell are collaborating on an Android-based cellphone?

Really?

Seems unlikely. Certainly, Google has said repeatedly that Android is intended not as a platform for building one Google-branded Gphone, but an entire ecosystem of them. And that will require the investment and commitment of a host of mobile-phone manufacturers–manufacturers who probably aren’t interested in developing handsets that run on a competitor’s platform.

A more likely scenario: Dell simply joins Google’s Open Handset Alliance and announces its own Android-based phone.

Unlike Verizon, AT&T doesn’t need to open up its wireless network to other wireless devices. Why? According to Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T’s wireless business, the company’s network has always been open. “We are the most open wireless company in the industry. You can use any handset on our network you want,” de la Vega told USA Today. “We don’t prohibit it, or even police it.”

So non-AT&T phones work on AT&T’s network. AT&T just didn’t bother to tell anyone–until all this talk of open-access wireless and Google’s open mobile-software platform, Android, made it a PR talking point. Your turn, T-Mobile.