T-Mobile Wagers Deal With Google Is Worth the Risk - WSJ.com:
The smallest of the leading U.S. cellphone operators, T-Mobile, appears to be the one making the biggest bets.Perhaps its most daring is its most recent. The Deutsche Telekom AG unit said it will release a phone next year based on Google Inc.'s advanced new software, wagering that it has more to gain than to fear from a partnership with the Web giant.
Most other U.S. carriers such as AT&T; Inc. and Verizon Wireless have so far stayed on the sidelines, leery of Google's push to expand its presence on mobile phones. Those companies fear it could snatch away future revenue from mobile advertising and loosen their ability to control what phone features customers can access. But T-Mobile USA Inc. has aggressively pursued the Google relationship, seeing it as a way to improve the basic operating software on its phones and offer popular Google-branded applications like its Internet search engine and Google Maps.
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HTC's Shadow phone"Certainly Google is a name consumers trust," said Cole Brodman, T-Mobile's chief development officer. "There are some things they do that are best-in-class."
It is likely that T-Mobile will be the first U.S. carrier to bring a Google-powered cellphone to market. The two sides have been working together for several months to develop the specifications for a new device, which would be powered by the Google-backed Android open operating platform. The companies have declined to name the manufacturer of the phone, but most people in the industry suspect it is Taiwan's HTC Corp. The effort puts T-Mobile ahead of Sprint Nextel Corp., the only other U.S. carrier among the 33 partners Google announced last week in its push for open operating platforms for cellphones. ...
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