Taiwan's fast-growing HTC (High Tech Computer) has become well known as the leading supplier of Windows Mobile phones, and DigiTimes reports that it is "now manufacturing Google handsets with shipments officially commencing at the end of 2007, according to handset component makers."
Last December, David Smith, The Observer's technology correspondent, had a great story about the talks between Google and Orange: The future for Orange could soon be Google in your pocket.
In March, Andrew Orlowski filled in some of the background related to various companies that Google had bought to support its push into mobiles: Google phone -- it's for real. The most important:
In August 2005 Google acquired a stealth-mode startup called Android, founded by Andy Rubin. Rubin was a veteran of Apple and General Magic, but is best known for leading WebTV and subsequently Danger Inc. Danger produced one of the most-photographed phones of recent years, thanks to Paris Hilton: its Hiptop was marketed by T-Mobile as the Sidekick.
It now looks as though Google really is doing a branded or, more accurately, co-branded Google/Orange phone, at least for starters, and it will be interesting to see if/how the hardware differs from one of the standard HTC models that are sold under many different names.
I'd expected that Google would produce a mobile software suite that it would offer on different handsets from a wide range of carriers, much like Google Desktop is offered on a range of PCs. But if Google has got heavily involved in the hardware design as well, then my earlier scepticism was wrong.
