No Gphone, Google bets on Android

Google has unveiled an ambitious strategy that will make cellphones cheaper and speed up internet surfing.

Google's Director of Mobile Platforms, Andy Rubin, said in a telephonic conversation from the US that the new platform called Android should reduce the prices of today's $500 smart phones to around $100-150 in a year or so. "If there's ever a Gphone, it will be built on the Android platform," he said.

Smart phones are cell phones that run business applications like documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Android includes a new browser and Linux operating system (OS) which will compete with platforms such as Apple's OS X (Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on the board of Apple) on the iPhone, the BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and the Palm OS.

While there had been widespread reports that Google would announce alliances to create its own handsets - potentially even carrying the Google brand - it instead laid out a strategy that will give it a background role.

The announcement however is more ambitious than any single 'Google Phone' that the media has been speculating about over the past few weeks.

Google has partnered with 34 technology and mobile companies "" under the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) "" to develop Android.

The names include the likes of Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile (but not Nokia and Microsoft).

The name of Bharti Airtel too has been doing the rounds, but Rubin did not want to discuss specific companies.

He also declined to comment on whether its India centre had any part to play in the platform's development.

The Android (derived from name of the company that Google bought from Rubin in 2005) platform is "open", which means the source code can be altered by developers for use on handsets.

"Open source reduces the cost of software which comprises a major chunk of the cellphone cost," explained Rubin. Mash-up is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool.

A typical example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data from Craigslist, thereby creating a new and distinct web service.

Meanwhile, carriers like Verizon and AT&T are worried that the open-software standards could expose users to software attacks or security breaches. Rubin does not think so.