T-Mobile's Android Phone Has Limits Outside Google (NewsFactor)
Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com 10 minutes ago
Now that analysts are getting their hands on the T-Mobile G1, talk is beginning about what the first Android-powered phone doesn't offer. T-Mobile launched the HTC-made device Tuesday, complete with full touchscreen functionality and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for a mobile Web experience largely driven by Google products, including Search, Google Street View, Gmail and YouTube.
The phone is making the intended splash. In fact, Neil Mawston, director of Wireless Device Strategies at Strategy Analytics, is forecasting a major Android impact on the 10.5 million smartphones to be sold in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2008.
"We estimate smartphones with Google's Android operating system, led by HTC of Taiwan, will reach 0.4 million units in the quarter, for a four percent market share," Mawston said. "Android is a relatively late entrant and it will join an increasingly crowded market alongside Blackberry, Microsoft, Apple, Palm, Symbian and LiMo."
Limited Synchronizing
The T-Mobile G1 synchronizes e-mail, calendar and contacts from Gmail as well as most other POP3 or IMAP e-mail services. The device multitasks, so you can read a Web page while also downloading e-mail in the background. And it combines Instant Messaging support for Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. But there is no connection to the desktop.
"If I have my contacts in Outlook or my Calendar in iCal, I have no easy way of synchronizing that content onto my device without figuring out some way of getting it up to a Google service," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia. "That's fine if I am a Google user. If I am not a Google user, then I have to sign up for that service, and I have to figure out how to export and maintain my content. In some cases it might synch. In some cases it might not."
Digital Media Limits
Customers can use the G1's 3G and Wi-Fi connection to attach and share pictures over e-mail and text messages or download music from the Web. Soon, T-Mobile said, users will also be able to upload and post pictures to a blog. There's also built-in support for YouTube. And an Amazon store is built in. But there's no easy way to synch songs from iTunes, Gartenberg said.
"Apple has shown how important media and entertainment are to these devices," Gartenberg said. "But there's no media story on Android yet. It's great to provide an Amazon store where I can actually purpose and download music. But what about the 10,000 songs on my computer? There's no way to synchronize and manage that content, and get it on the device."
While consumers can drag and drop the songs, Gartenberg isn't convinced most users want to sort through their song collection to figure out which ones they want to transfer. It's already organized on iTunes, he reasoned.
"It's fine to be Google-centric, but you have to realize that the whole world isn't Google-centric yet," Gartenberg said. "If you want me to use your device, you are going to have to provide hooks to the content and data I have living elsewhere, mostly on my computer."