Unexpected competition
For reasons known only to him, Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar has decided to tell various financial publications, including TheStreet.com and FT.com, that Google is cooperating with a smartphone manufacturer to launch a Google branded phone, according to his sources among Asian ODMs.
As if that wasn't enough to antagonise phone operators, it will supposedly be launched free of any operator lock-in - effectively smashing the long-established mobile phone industry paradigm of handsets being launched in close cooperation with often a single operator.
In what we're sure is a complete coincidence, it turns out Kumar has recently published a report that he presumably would like people to buy. In it he also talks about a Google netbook, which will run on the Chrome OS, and claims this phone launch will be the first of many from Google.
The phone will apparently run on Android 2.0 and it will be packing Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset.
If this is true, it will be contentious not only for cutting operators out of the handset sales process, but for providing an Android based competitor just when there's real momentum building for the OS among handset makers. It's almost as if Google was waiting until they were too committed to pull out before showing its hand.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch is reporting that Google will be announcing its own, Spotify-like, music streaming service on 28 October. It looks like Google is in the middle of a pretty aggressive expansion and diversification of its offerings.
