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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009
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5

Google, Verizon Team Up on Smartphones

Move to Android seen as real challenge to iPhone, BlackBerry

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(Newser) – Google and Verizon will partner on a line of smartphones and software running the search giant’s Android OS and served by the carrier. Verizon is the largest-yet wireless network to back Google, and the announcement could complicate what was once a simple smartphone rivalry between Apple and BlackBerry, BusinessWeek reports. Analysts expect a handful of Android phones by the likes of Motorola and Samsung by month’s end.

Incredibly, analysts believe up to 30 devices could debut by the end of the year, and some think Verizon will push the phones ahead of BlackBerrys and others. One selling point for buyers is Google’s app store, Android Market. Though there are now only a rather anemic 10,000 applications—Apple has 85,000—with Verizon’s 87.7 million users that number could skyrocket. Verizon’s gamesmanship with Apple—it has sought to carry the iPhone—is not lost on watchers. The move reads “We are not desperate,” one says.

A Verizon store in New York.
A Verizon store in New York.   (AP Photo)
Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, left, and Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless.
Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, left, and Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless.   (AP Photo)
Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of Motorola Mobile Devices, holds up a new Android-based Motorola Cliq during a mobile Internet conference in San Francisco, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009.
Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of Motorola Mobile Devices, holds up a new Android-based Motorola Cliq during a mobile Internet conference in San Francisco, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009.   (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
A prototype mobile phone loaded with Google's Android OS at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009.
A prototype mobile phone loaded with Google's Android OS at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009.   (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
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They are showing Apple: "If we don't get the iPhone, we have all this other stuff; we are not desperate." - Tero Kuittinen, MKM Partners

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5 comments
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Circusdog
Oct 7, 09 9:42 AM CDT
Great...more car accidents! Reply
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0
Cprizzle
Oct 7, 09 9:44 AM CDT
It's odd, they seem desperate to me. Every phone claiming to be an iPhone rival a swiftly fizzled. With Apple pushing out new iPhone's quarterly, this doesn't seem likely to change anything. Reply
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IN RESPONSE:
shonangreg
Oct 7, 09 10:28 AM CDT
No, this is great. RIM started proprietary and closed, and Palm gummed up with DRM as well, and unresponsive to customers and developers. Android is quite open from the ground up. It is backed by google using standard formats easily transferrable to other devices (including the iPod). Developers are at the heart of the whole thing. It lies at the hearet of a much better model of delivering software and data to one's device. Open and standard. DRM works, but it is not forced on developers. That is a lot -- and it is worth waiting for the open market to get something like this right instead of locking the mass of consumers into a single, quirky vendor.
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+2
Fondue
Oct 7, 09 9:47 AM CDT
Googizon, or Veroogle? Reply
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+1
IN RESPONSE:
Circusdog
Oct 7, 09 3:02 PM CDT
My vote: Veroogle
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