Google Mobile Phone Vendors
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The first Google phone retailed for $179 with a 2-year T-mobile contract.
There are two kinds of vendors you have to consider when you talk about a smartphone operating system: the handset manufacturers and the cell phone service providers. Handset manufacturers produce the actual hardware. Service providers are the phone companies like T-Mobile or AT&T. Some handset manufacturers work exclusively with a specific cell phone provider. In a few cases, a cell phone service provider will also produce its own hardware.
As we mentioned earlier, the first handset to feature the Android OS was the High Tech Computer Corporation's HTC G1. Before the phone even went on sale, bloggers and journalists began to speculate on who would be the next handset manufacturer to get into the Android game. One manufacturer that may soon offer its own Android phone is Motorola. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, Motorola may cut back on the operating systems it currently supports to focus on producing Android phones.
Another phone company interested in producing Android phones is Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. While that name may not be familiar to U.S. customers, DoCoMo is Japan's largest mobile phone provider. DoCoMo will partner with the South Korean company KTF to produce the handset [source: Reuters]. Other handset manufacturers include Lenovo, Hop-on and Huawei. As the Android OS evolves, we may see more handset manufacturers support the platform with hardware.
The first cell phone provider to support an Android phone was T-Mobile. The company first offered the HTC G1 on its 3G network to customers in the United States in October 2008 for $179 with a contract. A month earlier, T-Mobile offered current customers the opportunity to reserve an HTC G1 in advance. The pre-sale was a huge success -- T-Mobile had to end the sale early when orders exceeded the company's stock of 1.5 million phones [source: Bylund]. We may see more providers support Android in 2009 and beyond.
But some cell phone service providers have gone so far as to criticize the Android OS in public. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that Android wasn't "good enough to put the Sprint brand on it" [source: Carew]. Hesse did leave open the possibility that Sprint would work with the Android platform in the future. Meanwhile, Peter Michaels, the CEO of Hop-on, criticized Hesse's statements. Michaels alleged that Sprint makes it hard for inexpensive handset vendors to join their network. He also pointed out that Sprint was a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance -- a project that spawned Android. But Michaels said that while the company says it supports open platforms, its actions seem to contradict those claims [source: MarketWatch].
Other cell phone service providers may take a "wait and see" approach to Android. In the United States, providers like Verizon and AT&T support phones that are in the same competitive space as the HTC G1 (the Blackberry line and the iPhone, respectively). These companies have complicated business and political considerations to take into account before they can support a new operating system. That doesn't mean the obstacles they face are insurmountable -- Verizon announced on Oct. 6, 2009 that the company will support and sell Android-based devices on its network.
Verizon is the largest cell phone carrier in the United States. The company's support of Android could help the OS get a strong foothold in the marketplace. If that happens, Google might dominate the cell phone world the same way it has laid claim to online search.
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