Google G-Phone / Google Phone

Google will come out in mid-2008 with a mobile phone platform that incorporates a variety of Google online services and lets outside developers create applications, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The goal is to make Google applications and services as easily accessible on mobile phones as PCs, so that the company can extend its advertising business to cell phones and other wireless devices. Google may announce its mobile platform within weeks, according to the Journal.

The Journal’s article, based on anonymous sources, is the latest of multiple reports over the past six months or so about Google’s plans for the mobile market.

Although at some point it was speculated that Google might be involved in the actual manufacturing of phone hardware, that rumor is now discredited, as Google is expected to focus on developing mobile software.

For Google, it’s critical to replicate on mobile phones the success it has had on PC-based online advertising. After years of unfulfilled promises, mobile advertising will boom in coming years, as people spend more time using the Internet via their cell phones.

The Kelsey Group recently forecast that mobile search and display advertising in the U.S. will hit $33.2 million this year and grow at a compound annual rate of 112 percent through 2012, when it will total $1.4 billion.

Kelsey Group also expects the number of mobile Internet users to grow at a 20 percent compound annual clip in the U.S. through 2012, when there will be almost 92 million people going online via their cell phones.

Worldwide, mobile ad spending is expected to reach US$1.5 billion this year and grow to $11.3 billion by 2011, according to market researcher Informa Telecoms & Media.

Google is far from alone in its interest at pursuing this emerging opportunity in the mobile market, where all major telecom, online publishing and Internet players are jockeying for position.

Of course, delivering online services and applications via mobile phones isn’t as straightforward as doing it via PCs. In the mobile market, providers of online applications often have to strike up deals and partnerships with handset makers and wireless carriers.

In a recent interview with the IDG News Service, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of Search Products & User Experience, acknowledged there are specific challenges to bringing Google services to cell-phone subscribers.

“The mobile space is very complicated,” she said.

Google has pursued various avenues for making its search engines and other services available via cell phones. It has adapted Google Web sites for mobile browsers, developed mobile applications people can download themselves, as well as preloaded Google software in handsets via formal partnerships with mobile industry players.

GosuBlogger

Wasn't Google supposed to have already announced its Google phone?

That question comes to mind whenever I hear about Google's imminent plans to announce a Google mobile phone device, mobile operating system, or suite of mobile applications. But, here we go again.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting Google will unveil within two weeks its own "advanced software and services that would allow handset makers to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year."

The Journal report suggests Google may make its announcement in tandem with a handset maker such as Taiwan's HTC Corp. or South Korea's LG Electronics. The report also hints a Google announcement might also shed light on a partnership with wireless carrier T-Mobile USA or France Telecom's Orange SA.

For months now the blogosphere has been buzzing with speculation about Google's desire to make applications and services as accessible to mobile phones as they are to PCs on the Internet. But carriers, critics say, see Google's plan as a threat to their control over the user experience and profits. In August, according to Rediff News, Google was set to launch its mobile phone by early September.

A possible Google phone could include an "open" operating system that would allow third-party developers to create applications for the phone beyond mobile offerings already offered by Google such as Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail, according the report.

update--The head of Google in Spain and Portugal has confirmed that Google is working on a mobile phone. "Some of the time the engineers are dedicated to developing a mobile phone," Isabel Aguilera is quoted as saying on the Spanish-news Web site Noticias.com.

A Google spokeswoman in the United States released this statement when asked for comment: "Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide. However, we have nothing further to announce."

Google stateside has repeatedly declined to comment on rumors of a Google Phone, but the smoke has been rising lately. Earlier this month, Simeon Simeonov of Polaris Venture Partners wrote in his blog that an inside source told him the Google Phone will be a BlackBerry-like device running C++ at the core with an operating system bootstrap, or loading program, and optimized Java, and that it would offer voice over Internet Protocol.

Rumors also circulated that Google and Samsung were building a phone, code-named "Switch," Simeonov said, and his posting includes what he claims is a leaked photo of the device. That wouldn't be so far-fetched, since Google and Samsung announced a partnership in January to bundle mobile versions of Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail on certain Samsung phones. Late last year, the rumor was that France Telecom Group's mobile-telephony division Orange was in discussions with Google.

Plus, Google has on its payroll Andy Rubin, the founder of handheld device maker Danger who later started Android, a mobile-software maker that Google bought in 2005. Google also acquired mobile-applications company Reqwireless and secretly acquired a company called Skia, whose first product is a portable graphics engine that renders 2D graphics on handhelds.