Google In Talks With Verizon and Sprint for Phone Software?
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Richard Baguley Published on October 31, 2007 Comment on this |
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31st Oct 07 – The Wall Street Journal is claiming that search engine giant Google is in talks with both Verizon Wireless and Sprint about using its long-rumored cell phone software on forthcoming phones.The story claims that Google will be announcing their cell phone software within two weeks, and that phones running the software will be available in the middle of next year. According to the story by Amol Sharma of the WSJ, the new software will allow the cariers to build customized phones, although it isn't clear if the software willb e a compelte operating system (OS) for the phones, or just software that runs on top of the existing OS. The carriers have been retiscent to use OSes from third parties on their phones, preferring to use their own software to offer the same user experience cross different phones. The Motorola Razr2, for instance, is available from all 4 major networks, but has different software on each network.
A deal with either network would give the new Google phone software a significnant inroad into the cell phoen market, but it is a little surprisign that Google is talking to verizon, given the war of words the two have fought ove the forthcoming 700MHz FCC frequency auction, and Google's apparent desire to bid in this auction. However, the two companies may be willing to put that aside to work together.
The WSJ article also claims that one issue that is still being discussed is how the companies would divide up the revenue from any deal. This would be from selling adverts that run alongside the information that the software presents, and the two companies would likely want to share the revenue.
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