A new, Google-branded handset promises to be one of the most advanced smartphones, and will include unlimited free calls, says Times Online.
The Googlephone promises to be one of the most advanced smartphones, with a large touchscreen display and a processor almost twice as fast as the one powering Apple’s iPhone 3GS. It will probably be the first phone to run a new version of Google’s Android software, codenamed Flan, offering high-speed 3-D gaming said to be as good as that of many handheld consoles.
According to Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Northeast Securities, a financial services firm, the Google-branded phone will be built by a third-party supplier, possibly the Taiwanese phone maker HTC, and will incorporate a processor from Qualcomm.
The real breakthrough, however, will come with the marriage of the Googlephone to Google Voice. Google Voice gives US users a free phone number and allows unlimited free calls to any phone in the country — landline or mobile. International calls start from a couple of cents (just over a penny) a minute.
But what carrier would want it? The Google phone would just burn bandwidth and cost voice revenue. Sprint/Clear perhaps?
Cisco estimates that a single smartphone produces as much data traffic as 40 traditional feature phones. So converting 10 million people from feature phones to smartphones is like adding 390 million new feature phone users, in terms of impact on the data network.
The United States is the 3rd largest wireless market, according to the CTIA. The CTIA reports there were about 270 million total wireless subscribers in the USA at the end of 2008, with about 87% penetration. They include Verizon (86M), AT&T (78M), Sprint (49M) and T-Mobile USA (30M) which total about 243 million.
The Data Tsunami Is Here. The cellular industry wants to double the amount of spectrum. White spaces, 700MHz, AWS and WiMAX will help, but more is needed.
Television broadcasters don’t pay a dime for their spectrum. Broadcasting had a good 50 year run, but “public service” now has nothing to do with it. Group owners run 1 minute of advertising for every 2 minutes of programming. Advertisers know 99% of their ad dollars are wasted on tv.
Perhaps “free” 720p broadcasts could be provided to everyone by dedicating perhaps 10% of television, LTE or WiMAX bandwidth to “multicasting“.
Google will combine second-by-second set-top data from TiVo with data from Dish Network, to track the viewing habits of more than 5 million TV sets — and sell ads with more precision.
The same business strategy might work with a $79 Roku box using WiMAX backhaul. A $40 government subsidy might promote broadband for everyone while maintaining free “broadcast television” reception on the 2.5GHz band or the current television band.
Condé Nast, Hearst and Time are banding together to produce a digital distribution joint venture, that will resemble an iTunes store for the magazine industry. The store is apparently being designed with multiple platforms in mind. A venture similar to Hulu or Boxee might work for local broadcasters, too.
A $100 box could deliver both free television (with targeted advertising) and inexpensive internet access. Newspapers, using a livecast model like TWIT.tv, might dominate over the antiquated NAB model with mobile, e-book and video delivery platforms. On demand. Everywhere.
Only $12.95/mo for a news subscription. Full internet access, $19.95/month.
Google Phone = Paradigm shift.
