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NEW YORK: Internet search leader Google took a giant leap into the mobile phone market on Tuesday, unveiling a handset developed with telecom carrier T-Mobile to compete with Apple's hot-selling iPhone.
The T-Mobile G1, the first mobile device powered by Google's open-source Android software, will be available in stores in the United States on October 22 and will cost 179 dollars.
Cole Brodman, T-Mobile chief technology and innovation officer, called the G1, built by the Taiwanese firm HTC, a "game-changing" device which will "power a new mobile Internet of the future."
The G1, which is a bit thicker but slightly narrower than an iPhone, 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 offers many of the features of the iPhone and Research in Motion's popular BlackBerry including a touch screen similar to that of the iPhone, a trackball for navigation, high-speed Internet browsing, Wi-Fi, e-mail, instant messaging and SMS texting.
It has a 3.0-megapixel camera with photo-sharing capability and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a feature lacking on the iPhone.
Internet retail giant Amazon.com announced shortly before the G1 release, in a direct challenge to Apple's iTunes, that the entire catalogue of the Amazon MP3 music store would be available on the new phone.
The new phone has, unsurprisingly, been closely integrated with Google applications such as Google Maps and G-Mail and can display videos from YouTube, the video-sharing site purchased by Google in 2006.
"Google's strategy is all about broad reach for their services," said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. "It's just the first step in a long strategic voyage for Google."
Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner Consulting, agreed.
"Google is moving into the mobile devices market not to become yet another mobile phone manufacturer but to enable a large addressable market for its services and applications," she said.
"The G1 is the first of a series of devices that will come to market and will be optimised to offer consumers a superior experience when using Google services and applications."
Google hopes the open-source Android software powering the G1 will eventually become the dominant operating system for mobile phones and make handsets compatible with the networks of multiple carriers.
"A developer will be able to use it as a platform," said Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms for Google. "A developer will be able to modify the platform and make it better."
"It's very exciting for me as a computer geek to have a phone that I can play with and modify," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who made a surprise appearance at the launch event.
The phone, Google's first foray into the highly competitive mobile phone market, also will allow users to access the Android Market, where they can download software applications from developers around the world.
Google announced the formation in November 2007 of a 34-member group called the "Open Handset Alliance" to develop Android, including China Mobile, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Telefonica, LG and eBay.
Google's share price rose by 4.62 percent in New York to 434.76 dollars shortly after the unveiling of the G1. - AFP/de
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