The GPhone was supposed to be something else! Google was going to build a mobile that would crush Apple, Microsoft, and others in the mobile OS market … instead they built an alliance (sounds a lot like their recently announced Open Social project) and promised to provide a mobile OS in an open source model. Doing so does something amazing … according to Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, “We are not building a GPhone; we are enabling 1,000 people to build a GPhone.” Powerful and interesting … couple it with partnerships with T-Mobile, Sprint, and the world’s largest mobile operator, China Mobile and we may have something here. You know their apps will run perfectly on it — and so will the delivery of mobile, targeted advertisements. The game will get interesting here … good to see the mobile space finally getting some forward movement.
This has a lot of promise. Time will tell if it ends up actually delivering on that promise. The biggest obstacle is probably the US carriers crippling the platform, as they have a tendency to do.
Even if it really ends up not being totally open, a mobile device that is tightly coupled with Google’s apps would be killer. It is the one thing that makes me eye wander momentarily from the iPhone.