The mobile industry likes nothing more than a good piece of gossip. One particularly juicy nugget of whisper that has refused to die is the Google phone, a piece of mobile kit the search giant is supposed to be working on.
Rumour hounds have been hard at it in recent weeks. Among the evidence used to back up the theory are patents the company has filed on predictive mobile location-based search tech; the blog of one venture capitalist, saying he has been told by sources of a BlackBerry-like gadget in the offing that may be Google-made or run a Google OS; and The Observer's recent report of a partnership struck between operator Orange and Google with a view to producing a branded device made by HTC.
I think it's more something nice to have, a box to tick rather than for a specific business reason. It would be an exercise in branding.
Google, of course, has made no public statement about moving into mobile hardware - aside from 'no comment' - but it certainly has seemed to be upping its activity in the area. It has signed deals with Vodafone to offer Google Maps and YouTube on mobile, worked on mobile advertising, gotten involved with far eastern operators and put its software on a number of devices, not least Nokia's Linux tablet range....
http://hardware.silicon.com/pdas/0,3...9166324,00.htm
Could be cool!