Google's Android invades, has iPhone in its sights

Singapore – A Google powered mobile phone, in partnership with Taiwanese company HTC and telco T-Mobile, has been launched to rival Apple’s iPhone device as well as the Windows Mobile operating system.

The T-Mobile G1 phone, which will be available in the US and UK in the next two months, will be the first mobile that uses Google’s open source Android operating system.

The phone will offer similar services to the iPhone as well as Google applications such as search, Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube, and has a feature which links it with music download service Amazon MP3.

"Increasingly, connectivity does not just mean a phone call, but rather access to the world’s information," Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms for Google, said in a statement.

"Today’s news signifies an important first step for the Open Handset Alliance: With Android, we’ve opened the mobile Web not only for millions of users, but also to mobilize the developer community that understands the next most important platform in the world rests in the palm of our hand."

A Google spokesperson said HTC is controlling the launch of the G1 phone in Asia. HTC was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

Apart from the US and UK, the G1 phone will be launched in European countries such as Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands early next year.

The Andriod project involves a group of coders contributing to the first open source mobile operating system and is expected to appear on numerous other devices soon.