Google launches G1 phone in United States

New York, Sep 24: On Tuesday, Sep 23, internet giant Google Inc launched the much awaited G1 mobile phone in collaboration with T-Mobile USA Inc to compete with rival Apple's iPhone. The G1 mobile phone runs on Google's Android operating system. It uses both a touch-screen and a slide-out keyboard. G1 is expected to go on sale in the United States on Oct 22 for $179 with a two-year T-Mobile wireless contract. The T-Mobile customers in US can pre-order the G1 phones.

The G1 which is a bit thicker but narrower than an iPhone and comes in three colors, black, white and brown, will go on sale in Britain in early November and in other European countries served by T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, in early 2009. The G1 markst the Mountain View, Califorinia-based Google's entry into a smart phone market dominated by Cupertino, Calif. based Apple Inc and Research In Motion Ltd, which have two-thirds of the market. More than half of the sales in that market were RIM's BlackBerry, followed by the iPhone and smartphones made by Sunnyvale, Calif-based Palm Inc.

Analysts expect T-Mobile will sell fewer than 500,000 of the phones in the fourth quarter. Apple's new iPhone 3G, by contrast, sold more than 1 million units in the three days following its July debut.

T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel Corporation and Motorola Corp are members of the Open Handset Alliance Google formed in 2007 to develop Android. Intel Corp is also part of that group.

Two of the US's biggest mobile phone carriers, AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless are not part of that group. AT&T is the exclusive wireless provider for the iPhone.

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