T-Mobile Makes Big Bet on Google Phone

T-Mobile plans to release a cell phone based on Google software next year, making it likely to be the first US carrier to bring out a Google-powered phone. The bigger carriers are wary as the Internet giant moves onto their turf, but T-Mobile relishes the chance to offer Google apps, reports the Wall Street Journal, in hopes of gaining market share.

The phone will use the Google-back 'Android' platform. T-Mobile joins Sprint-Nextel as the only US carriers so far to partner with Google in its push for an open operating platform for mobile phones. It's not the first time T-Mobile has been willing to go against industry orthodoxy, the Journal says; the smallest of the U.S. mobile companies has even broken ranks on supposedly sacrosanct billing practices. (More Google stories.)