Googlephone?

Rumours of a google phone began to surface a few days ago, and have since been “confirmed” by a number of sites calling it a “certainty”.

Reportedly due out early next year, the device will come with a new version of Google’s Android OS, and will be directly controlled by google. This seems to make sense as google has shown increasing interest in mobile phone hardware, starting with a fairly hands-off approach with HTC, to being intimately involved in the design of Motorola’s Droid, and a google phone is a logical extension of this trend.

Apple drives much of its success from controlling both hardware and software, as does RIM with its blackberry smartphones, and such an arrangement offers some major advantages from a support and testing point of view.

With the android app store growing quickly, having a benchmark platform to develop for should only spur even more developers to adopt android, especially to the loss of the apple app store, due largely to android’s seemingly more developer-friendly approval process.

It would be also logical to assume some kind of marriage between a google phone and google voice – the implications here are very exciting, if uncertain, for Canadians.