Rumor: Dell to reveal Android-based handset next month?
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The speculation regarding Dell building a new handset starts up again.
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While Google's Android SDK for mobile applications could become a formidable competitor to Sun's own Java platform, Sun vice president James Gosling said Wednesday it is not possible for Sun to take a position on Android.Speaking at the Java Mobile &amp; Embedded Developer Days conference at Sun headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., Gosling cited insufficient information from Google.?"It's impossible to have a position [on Android], right, because there is no data," he said when interviewed at the event. "Over the last couple of years, Google's been showing their phone at telecom conferences all over the world and with different business models, all of which really scared the carriers and handset makers. And then with Android, they put out a bag of code with no business model."Unless the day comes when they say what they're going to do with it, it's just a bag of code sitting out there," Gosling said.There has been speculation that Android, which leverages Java, could fragment the Java platform. Android was announced Nov. 5 by the Open Handset Alliance. This group features Google and other participants looking to foster innovation on mobile phones and offer a better consumer experience, according to a press statement.An Android SDK has leveraged both the Eclipse open source platform and Java classes. Android applications are written using the Java programming language, according to a Google FAQ about Android dated Dec. 14.Google could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.A speaker at Wednesday's conference, however, gave Android a thumbs-up."I like some of the capability in the Android platform," said Sean O'Sullivan, CTO of Rococo Software, who presented on Java Specification Request (JSR) 82 pertaining to Java APIs for Bluetooth. "In particular, I like the ability to customize lots of different elements within the Android platform."Sun, meanwhile, is moving Java ME (Micro Edition) technologies to smaller systems such as microcontrollers, while Java SE (Standard Edition) capabilities are due to be offered on newer cell phones with greater functionality, Sun officials said at the conference. Java SE capabilities are expected to be included in the planned JavaFX Mobile platform for cell phones and devices.Also at the event, Sun announced the open-sourcing of the Squawk virtual machine, which is a Java ME-compliant virtual machine used in the Sun SPOT platform. Other components of Sun SPOT, including libraries, will be open-sourced at a later date after more due diligence, said Roger Meike, director of operations in Sun Microsystems Labs, which has overseen the Sun SPOT project.Sun hopes by releasing Squawk, developers will extend it beyond mobile phones. Squawk and Sun SPOT are already being used in applications such as robotics.Also open-sourced by Sun at the conference was the JXTA (Juxtapose) Java ME MIDP2.0 Proxyless Implementation. JXTA allows for setting up ad hoc networks of devices such as phones for applications, including discovery of participants in a conference, said Mohamed Abdelaziz, lead architect within the advanced development group of Sun's Java client software group.O'Sullivan noted the Marge project, a framework to help developers build Bluetooth applications in Java, is intended to facilitate use of JSR 82.
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The device is more like a souped-up smart phone and handheld with laptop features, a camera, speakers for music, GPS and more. It's also available only in Asia, with a European rollout promised soon.
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Japan&#39;s biggest mobile telecom carrier gave its strongest support yet to&#160;Google&#39;s Android platform&#160;on Thursday when it said it is considering a cell phone based on the technology.&quot;We are starting discussions to offer handsets that will have the Android operating system,&quot; said Takeshi Natsuno, managing director of the multimedia services department at NTT DoCoMo.The talks include getting support for I-mode, DoCoMo&#39;s hit mobile Internet service, on the Android platform. Nearly 48 million of DoCoMo&#39;s 53 million customers subscribe to I-mode, so having it on Android will be key to the Google platform&#39;s success in Japan.Android is a Linux-based platform for cell phones that will combine open-source components and include an operating system, middleware stack, customizable user interface and applications.NTT DoCoMo is one of the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, the group developing Android. Until Thursday hadn&#39;t disclosed what it hoped to gain from its participation in the group, which includes about 40 companies including some of the biggest names in the cell phone industry.&quot;When I look at the prototype, the Android-based handset works really well even on some of the cheaper handset designs,&quot; said Natsuno.Natsuno didn&#39;t provide any specifics about when such a handset might be available. When the Open Handset Alliance was launched last year Google said that it expected the first phones running the software to appear in late 2008.Despite its support for Android, NTT DoCoMo is also working with companies developing rival platforms. It has an alliance with Access, a Japanese software company with which is has deep ties, on the Access Linux Platform (ALP). DoCoMo is working on a &quot;carrier pack,&quot; a set of unique products and services, that can run on ALP, which is intended to be a common Linux platform for cell phones.Natsuno&#39;s comments came at a Tokyo news conference held to detail a partnership between the carrier and Google.The alliance will see Google products and applications added to DoCoMo handsets. These will include the addition of a Google search box on the main I-mode menu page from which users will access mobile and PC Web sites. Google Ads will appear alongside search results. The two companies said they are also planning to bring more Google services, such as Google Maps, to handsets and build in support for Flash video so that users can access and stream content from YouTube.Google will appear as the default start page on mobile phones that feature browsers for the full Internet.The deal is Google&#39;s second in the mobile space in Japan. It already has a deal with second-ranked carrier &quot;au&quot; to which it provides search and advertising services. Number three carrier Softbank Mobile has a link with Yahoo Japan, the portal in which its parent company, Softbank, is the biggest shareholder.&#160;
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Google will come out in mid-2008 with a mobile phone platform that incorporates a variety of Google online services and lets outside developers create applications, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.The goal is to make Google applications and services as easily accessible on mobile phones as PCs, so that the company can extend its advertising business to cell phones and other wireless devices. Google may announce its mobile platform within weeks, according to the Journal.The Journal&#39;s article, based on anonymous sources, is the latest of multiple reports over the past six months or so about Google&#39;s plans for the mobile market.Although at some point it was speculated that Google might be involved in the actual&#160;manufacturing of phone hardware, that rumor is now discredited, as Google is expected to focus on developing mobile software.For Google, it&#39;s critical to replicate on mobile phones the success it has had on PC-based online advertising. After years of unfulfilled promises, mobile advertising will boom in coming years, as people spend more time using the Internet via their cell phones.The Kelsey Group recently forecast that mobile search and display advertising in the U.S. will hit $33.2 million this year and grow at a compound annual rate of 112 percent through 2012, when it will total $1.4 billion.Kelsey Group also expects the number of mobile Internet users to grow at a 20 percent compound annual clip in the U.S. through 2012, when there will be almost 92 million people going online via their cell phones.Worldwide, mobile ad spending is expected to reach $1.5 billion this year and grow to $11.3 billion by 2011, according to market researcher Informa Telecoms &amp; Media.Google is far from alone in its interest at pursuing this emerging opportunity in the mobile market, where all major telecom, online publishing and Internet players are jockeying for position.Of course, delivering online services and applications via mobile phones isn&#39;t as straightforward as doing it via PCs. In the mobile market, providers of online applications often have to strike up deals and partnerships with handset makers and wireless carriers.In a recent interview with the IDG News Service, Marissa Mayer, Google&#39;s vice president of Search Products &amp; User Experience,&#160;acknowledged there are specific challenges&#160;to bringing Google services to cell-phone subscribers.&quot;The mobile space is very complicated,&quot; she said.Google has pursued various avenues for making its search engines and other services available via cell phones. It has adapted Google Web sites for mobile browsers, developed mobile applications people can download themselves, as well as preloaded Google software in handsets via formal partnerships with mobile industry players.&#160;
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But alleged specs rather sus Speculation surrounding the release of Motorola's alleged Sidekick -style handset, aka Zante, took a leap forward this week, following the release of some glamorous pictures and - it has to be said - a somewhat iffy spec sheet.â¦
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Don't look on the Dell Web site for home AMD-based PCs. The company is selling them only in brick and mortar stores or via phone orders now.
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Korea's Samsung Electronics hopes to  have a phone based on Google's Android mobile phone software  platform by early next year, it said at the Mobile World  Congress on Monday.
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Forbes.com is reporting details on the rumored Motorola/Apple music phone, as told to them by Apple VP of Applications Eddy Cue. Referring to the new device, Cue was quoted as saying: &quot;What we&#39;ve talked about
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Is Google really working on its own operating system for mobile phones? It seems we're likely to find out one way or another fairly soon.
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A vendor based in Dubai pounced on the enterprise mobility market Tuesday evening with a set of Windows Mobile 6 phones that come with built-in security and management software and will be sold independent of carriers.The company, i-mate, unveiled its Ultimate series of four GSM phones at Showstoppers, a product showcase held alongside the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment show happening this week in San Francisco. They will start hitting the market worldwide in the middle of next month.The devices all are about the size of a typical smartphone, run Microsoft&#39;s Windows Mobile 6 operating system, and come with the Office Mobile suite. Two have touchscreens, and two have QWERTY keyboards, one of them using a &quot;slider&quot; design with a larger keyboard and a screen that can be viewed horizontally. They are aimed at markets ranging from small business to larger midsize enterprises.One thing that sets i-mate apart is its business model: It will sell the phones in the U.S. through resellers and retail channels, bypassing mobile operators and the subsidies they typically offer. The i-mate phones will range in price from about $600 to $800, said Nicole Buchanan, vice president of sales and marketing (Americas) at i-mate. The company isn&#39;t averse to carrier distribution if it can make a deal: It will sell devices through Telstra in Australia, Buchanan said.Although carriers dominate the U.S. handset business, a few device makers are starting to take matters into their own hands. Nokia sells phones through its own retail stores and makes some high-end devices available through alternative distributors like Brightpoint, which i-mate will also use. The trend allows businesses to make their handset choices without worrying about what carrier to use or how long the mobile operator will continue offering the device they want.The traditional mobile handset business, in which carriers dictate the timing of handset and service rollouts based on their own business plans, doesn&#39;t match up with typically long enterprise planning cycles, IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi said Monday at the show. Enterprises often can&#39;t find out what phones will be available when they carry out their mobile strategies or whether their current phone models will still be available in the future. Although hardware makers are starting to gain some autonomy, with the prominent example of Apple and its iPhone, they have a long way to go, Bakhshi said.The i-mate phones come with built-in software for securing and managing the devices. The Secure i-Q software lets users or IT support people lock down a lost or stolen device or wipe the data from it over the air. They can then configure a replacement device with all the appropriate applications over the air, Buchanan said. Custom i-Q allows for customization of each device with applications, e-mail settings, and features over the air.i-mate&#39;s only previous product was a digital picture frame with Wi-Fi. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It developed the i-Q software and designed the Ultimate phones, which are built by contract manufacturers. All the devices use an XScale PXA 520MHz processor and have storage expandable to 2GB. They come with features typical of high-end phones, including Bluetooth and cameras. Three of the models have a front-facing camera that can be used for videoconferencing, according to i-mate. One feature that makes the devices stand out is XGA output, which lets a user plug the handset into a full-size display or projector.The Ultimate 6150 and 8150 touch-screen phones and 8502 QWERTY phone are due to ship worldwide in mid-November. The 9502 slider phone will ship around the end of the year, i-mate said.
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Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. plans to begin selling later this month a cellular telephone that includes a hard-disk drive. The handset was unveiled
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Blog: New rumors from publications in India say a "Google Phone" will likely be introduced within the next couple of weeks, but I wouldn't get too excited just yet.
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More info on that Sony handheld mockup that's been surfacing on the internet for months: The Mylo 2 looks like a cross between the PSP and a HTC-style QWERTY sliderphone. Look for a 2008 CES announcement.
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Google&#39;s Android software platform for mobile phones&#160;is coming to life in Barcelona with a number of chip manufacturers showing it running on prototype or proof-of-concept phones at the Mobile World Congress on Monday.Freescale, Marvell, NEC Electronics, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments all had Android on show. Most of them expect to see Android phones based on their chips on the market in the second half of this year.The hardware ranged from bulky development boards with daughter cards sticking out at unlikely angles to more compact devices small enough to slip into your pocket. All were built around chips containing processor cores designed by Arm, a British fabless semiconductor company.One of the most polished prototypes is on the Texas Instruments stand -- although TI representatives insisted that it&#39;s just an example of how a finished product could look as the company only makes chips, leaving the development of phones to its customers. &quot;We don&#39;t do plastic,&quot; one said.TI actually had Android running on two different devices. One was based on its OMAP850, a single-chip device containing an application processor for Android and a baseband processor for controlling the phone&#39;s radio interface. The other contained TI&#39;s OMAP3430 multimedia application processor, capable of decoding high-definition television signals at a resolution of 720p. It requires a separate baseband processor, and is designed for high-end multimedia phones.Developing software for a new phone typically takes 14 to 18 months, said Ramesh Iyer, mobile Internet device product manager at TI. &quot;Android cuts that dramatically. It&#39;s a disruptor,&quot; he said.Google is shaking the market in other ways, Iyer said. &quot;Android is a single stack. You don&#39;t have to go looking for third-party solutions. Suddenly, they have defragmented the whole Linux ecosystem into one building block,&quot; he said.Android is entering an already crowded market for mobile phone software: To see how crowded, you only had to look at the NEC stand, where four prototypes containing its Medity2 processor were packed onto a narrow table. One was running Symbian OS, one Windows Mobile, one Android on top of Wind River Linux, and the last was running the same Wind River Linux but with a different application layer based on software from Trolltech and Esmertec.NEC staff expressed surprise at the level of interest in Android, saying they expected more attention for the completed phones based on the Medity2 at the next table. Manufactured for NTT DoCoMo, those phones contained the version of Linux promoted by the LiMo Foundation.The two systems are not necessarily in competition, though. With Android&#39;s focus on the application layer and Limo&#39;s work on the middleware, the underlying services needed to link applications to the Linux kernel, the two can be complementary, NEC staff said.Marvell took the prize for the most secretive Android demonstrations, refusing to allow photographs and declining even to say on which of its communications processors the software was running. The company showed a compact handset running the Android interface with a bare minimum of applications and a more complete installation playing video and browsing the Web on a bulky development board. Shrinking that down to a pocket-sized device will not take long, staff said. In fact, they had one ready -- just not loaded with the Android software.Android&#39;s Linux roots are likely to encourage the development of a wave of new handset applications, said Marvell&#39;s marketing director Vish Deshmane.&quot;You will see a lot more software to run on devices from people who want to exploit the commonality with desktop systems. It&#39;s going to be a boon for the 3G world because more applications means more data traffic, so operators will be happy,&quot; he said.Over at Freescale Semiconductor, staff showed Google Maps zooming in on the center of Barcelona on a development board built around Freescale&#39;s i.MX31 processor. This processor is not intended for mobile phones at all, and is more at home in GPS&#160;terminals or media players such as Toshiba&#39;s Gigabit and Microsoft&#39;s Zune.Qualcomm&#39;s demonstration of its 7201 combined baseband and application processor sparkled, but did not exploit the chip&#39;s full potential. The spinning globe of Android&#39;s Global Time application turned smoothly even without the assistance of the 3D graphics hardware acceleration, for which the drivers are not yet ready, said Rob Woodford.Android phones based on the chip will go on sale in the second half of this year, Woodford said -- but U.S. readers should contain their excitement: the Qualcomm display was overshadowed by a card warning that&#160;it may be prohibited from shipping the products on show to the U.S.&#160;because of a Dec. 31 court injunction obtained by chip rival Broadcom in a patent infringement case.The Mobile World Congress runs through Thursday at the Fira de Barcelona showground.
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Specialized blogs are all abuzz this week with rumors that Internet giant Google will soon launch the &quot;Google Phone&quot; or &quot;GPhone,&quot; a cheap mobile phone equipped with a Google operating system.
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T5200 to tackled entry-level Turion X2s? Intel will ship its anticipated low-end mobile Core 2 Duo T5200 dual-core processor next month, it has been claimed by Taiwanese notebook manufacturer moles. The part has not, apparently, been listed on recent Intel mobile roadmaps.â¦