Google's Smartphone Slated for This Fall

Google’s long-rumored Android-powered smartphone could have customers surfing the Web and chatting by as early as October, the New York Times reports. The gadget, the product of a partnership between T-Mobile and HTC, is expected to challenge Apple’s iPhone and other smartphones that offer PC-like functions as well as voice service.

Google has opened the Android operating software to an alliance of companies to develop a suite of applications, a la the iPhone, that customers can download to customize their handset. Google, like Apple, sees the future of its business on the mobile Web. “We can make more money on mobile than we do on the desktop, eventually,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said. (More Google stories.)