Found via Slashdot: Wiseandroid.com has an article provocatively entitled “The Googlephone: Google gears up for attack on mobile phone market” in which it claims Google is preparing to release its own self-branded Android-powered iPhone-equivalent phone.
Of course, there is nothing particularly earthshaking about yet another Android phone hitting the market—last month, Wiseandroid noted that over 50 Android-powered phones will be released in the near future. But this one will be the first to harness the power of Google’s Google Voice + Gizmo5 VOIP platform to let customers make calls for free.
The article is not entirely clear how this is going to work. Will the phone be sold with voice service through standard providers? Will it be sold with a data-only connection like Amazon’s Kindle? And I particularly wonder about this passage:
Google could also antagonise the networks by selling its mobile phone directly to customers and inviting them to use their existing Sim cards, whatever network they are on. “Google wants the Googlephone to be carrier-agnostic,” Kumar predicts. This could push the price of the handset to well over £500, because the cost of smartphones is heavily subsidised by networks, which recoup the money by locking customers into their services.
I’m just a little puzzled over this. Apple is able to sell its iPod Touch device for $200-$400 without any telephone-company subsidies, and it can do almost everything a smartphone can do except connect to the cell network. What is there about a cell phone that would make it have to cost $1,000 or more without cell phone companies’ contract benefits?
Like the iPod Touch or iPhone, the Android platform offers the ability to read e-books in a number of different applications—not so many as the iPhone, of course, but Android has a much smaller userbase so far. If the Googlephone puts smartphones in more people’s hands, both Android’s userbase and that of e-book apps in general could see a benefit.
If any company has a shot at knocking the iPhone out of its position of smartphone primacy, I would guess it to be Google. But “iPhone killers” have been tried before.
According to the article, the Googlephone is expected to launch in the US in early 2010.
“What is there about a cell phone that would make it have to cost $1,000 or more without cell phone companies’ contract benefits?”
Good question. For years, my wife used a phone that A) made phone calls, and B)… uh, sorry, no B. It made phone calls, period. It had a contact list (although she never used it), but not much else. The list price on this phone was well under $100.
Now, I’m no electronics engineer, but it seems to me that if you duct-taped the guts of that (sub-$100) phone to an iPod Touch, you’d have a smart phone for less than $100 over the cost of the Touch.
Which leaves a few hundred bucks wanting an explanation.
I suspect the higher price might be because of lower volumes. Don’t forget that the iPod sells in the millions. Smartphones have a much lower sell through so their manufacturing costs have to be spread over a much smaller base.