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Revising their previous target of 600,000 HTC G1s shipped by the end of 2008, HTC CEO Peter Chou has disclosed that the company now expects to ship at least 1 million of the world’s first Android handset by year’s end.

Of course, these numbers may seem a bit low if you’re still going on the false idea that pre-orders alone reached 1.5 million, a count which blazed across the internet as a result of some faulty calculations in a Motley Fool story.

While it’s not quite as mind-boggling as the 1 million iPhone 3Gs Apple sold in just 3 days after launch, pushing one million handsets in 2 1/2 months is no small feat. According to a comment made by Steve Jobs in July, the original iPhone broke the 1 million mark in 74 days, which also works out to just about 2 1/2 months. By units shipped, the first Android phone is looking to be as much of a success as the first Apple phone.

So why might HTC be seeing an increase in orders? Traditional factors (like marketing) aside, I’d imagine that much of the success stems from worth-of-mouth triggered by Android Market applications. When a handset does something cool, owners show it off; the easier it is to add more cool stuff to the device, the more likely it is that people will be saying “Hey! Check this out.”

[Via Digitimes]
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Source: Greg Kumparak

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When it comes to charging for mobile apps, payments usually have to go through either the carriers or one of the emerging mobile app platforms such as Apple or Google’s Android. The problem with charging for an iPhone app through iTunes is that Apple takes 30 percent. A startup called Billing Revolution wants to charge about one tenth as much for a seamless, mobile one-click shopping experience. Already available on other phones, Billing Revolution is announcing availability today for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android apps.

Once a consumer signs up to pay for things through Billing Revolution, he is presented with an Amazon-like one-click payment option no matter what app is using it. (Didn’t Amazon patent that?). Billing Revolution charges a 3.5 percent transaction fee plus 50 cents per transaction.

Source: Erick Schonfeld

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While Steve Ballmer never associated Android with anything nasty nor did he suggest that killing puppies could look dignified next to building Android, he did say that creating a mobile OS was “financially unsound” for Google and that Google was already far behind the competition.

“They can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people, blah dee blah dee blah, but you know they start out way behind, in a certain sense.”

He also questioned their financial strategy, claiming that Android has no revenue model and that carriers will take android and then charge Google big bucks to carry their search on the standard Android deck or UI.

“Google doesn’t exactly bubble to the top of the list of the top competitors we’ve got going in mobile. They might someday. But right now..” he said at Telstra’s investment day.

Source: John Biggs

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Filed under: Cellphones

Look, Dan Hesse is an intelligent individual, which means he knew good and well that he’d start a flame war when making one particular comment to the National Press Club in Washington. The CEO of Sprint casually proclaimed that he didn’t feel Android (in its current form) was “good enough to put the Sprint brand on.” In all fairness, Sprint has shown a friendly side to Google in the past, and he did promise to sell an Android-powered phone “at some time in the future,” but asserting that Sprint is in the position to shy away from what’s arguably the most exciting thing to happen to the mobile realm since the advent of the iPhone is, um, questionable at best.

[Via Android Authority]

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Cellphones

Sure, we’ve seen a lot of product announcements from Hop-on accompanied by janky product renders over the years — but we’ve never seen an actual Hop-on phone, so we’re a little skeptical of the company’s promise this morning to release an Android phone at CES this year. What’s more, it’s supposed to come in under $200, which is right in character for a manufacturer whose major claim to fame is the “disposable” cell phone, we suppose. We’ll see if such a phone actually appears at the show — Hop-on boldly says this mythical device will make it “competitive in the high-end phone market,” which is probably sending shock waves through the offices of HTC, Apple, and RIM as we speak.

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Source: Nilay Patel

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

We were sorta hoping HTC was going to get straight to work on its next batch of Android handsets post haste after getting the G1 out of the door — you know, just to close the fashion gap with its WinMo line, if nothing else — but the word on the street is that it’d like to spread the first-gen love just a little further and wider by hooking up its Dopod subsidiary in China. According to an unnamed Dopod source, the current plan has the G1 going to the Far East “possibly” in the first quarter of ‘09, featuring radios better suited for China’s airwaves — possibly TD-SCDMA, possibly just EDGE. For what it’s worth, Dopod’s corporate logo will up the G1’s rugged good looks by a factor of ten — seriously, isn’t it awesome? [Warning: Subscription required]

[Via Talk Android]

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Source: Chris Ziegler

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Filed under: Cellphones

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

As Switched On exemplified in the frenzy of mobile Ts and primary Gs last week, much of the attention focused on the involvement of Google and comparisons to the iPhone. Searching Google for “‘T-Mobile G1′ Apple” yields over 6.7 million results on Google. Searching for “‘T-Mobile G1′ HTC” yields only 3.4 million.

Given that the phone is being branded “T-Mobile G1 with Google,” the temptation is to say that HTC, which has long vowed to step into the white light from behind the white label, has failed to capitalize on one of the best branding opportunities in handset history. However, there would have been limits as to how much spotlight it could have stolen in the wake of media fascination with Google and one can have only so many brands listed in the name of a phone. Wireless carriers are among the biggest television advertisers, and Google is the biggest advertising powerhouse online. Together they will fund the G1 marketing push. The stakes were just too high for HTC to significantly advance its branding status with T-Mobile, which has used its carrier brand for such HTC handsets as the Dash, Wing and Shadow.

But there are more paradoxes in HTC’s first Android handset.

Continue reading Switched On: The T-Mobile G1 — by Google and what’s-their-names

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Source: Ross Rubin

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Filed under: Cellphones

There’s really no denying it — T-Mobile’s G1 and Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X1 are two of the hottest mobiles around right now, and as predicted, all sorts of sparks flew when the two sat down for a side-by-side photo session. In a Dutch comparison of the two handsets, reviewers pointed out that the G1 was “significantly larger” than the SE counterpart, and while it’s completely subjective, they also asserted that the X1 was a “true piece of art in comparison to the dusty look of the G1 [nice one, Google Translator].” Do yourself a favor and check out the whole thing in the read link.

[Via CoolSmartphone]

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Source: Darren Murph

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