The Google Phone and the iPhone – both looking for software and spectrum

Accord­ing to a report in tomorrow’s Busi­ness Week, devel­op­ers are build­ing appli­ca­tions for the Google Phone. I men­tioned the gPhone on 27 August. This 6 Sep­tem­ber arti­cle has addi­tional details.

Of course, every­one has signed non-disclosure agree­ments (NDA) and Google man­age­ment is doing its best to dis­pel these per­sis­tent rumors of a web-centric Linux-powered mobile phone.

Google and Apple have a fruit­ful part­ner­ship, as I men­tioned on 21 June. But the mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­try keeps grow­ing, and Google needs new ways to increase its adver­tis­ing rev­enue. The gPhone would pro­vide a great oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate a mobile adver­tis­ing industry.

Google seems to build­ing a plat­form that pro­gram­mers can use to eas­ily build mobile appli­ca­tions, with plenty of hooks into Google ser­vices like Gmail, Google Maps, and the Google Search engine.

If Google does open up this appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­face (API) so that pro­gram­mers can build true mobile appli­ca­tions that run on the gPhone and tap the Inter­net, it will be much eas­ier for devel­op­ers to dis­trib­ute their gPhone soft­ware on the mobile Internet.

Com­pare this sce­nario with the Apple iPhone, which restricts devel­op­ers to web-based mobile appli­ca­tions. Apple likes to lock down their hard­ware to keep it sta­ble and secure. AT&T, like any sen­si­ble mobile car­rier, wants to keep its net­work secure and free from rogue appli­ca­tions. It’s a clas­sic walled gar­den.

The closed soft­ware model works for the iPod, but it remains to be seen if cus­tomers will tol­er­ate a closed iPhone. Cor­po­rate cus­tomers want to add their own soft­ware to the iPhone, of course, but it’s so much eas­ier when the API is open and available.

Google and Apple are each look­ing at the upcom­ing FCC auc­tion for the ana­log tele­vi­sion spec­trum. Busi­ness Week spec­u­lated on their plans in this 10 Sep­tem­ber arti­cle. The win­ners of this auc­tion would con­trol a nice range of con­ve­nient, unused band­width in North Amer­ica after tele­vi­sion sta­tions switch to HDTV trans­mis­sion in early 2009. That spec­trum is a great place to build a national mobile telecom­mun­ci­a­tions net­work that’s inde­pen­dent of the mobile phone carriers.

Given Apple’s closed model, it’s easy to guess that an Apple mobile net­work would fea­ture Apple hard­ware, soft­ware and ser­vices, with Apple call­ing the shots on pricing.

Google, on the other hand, looks more likely to let mul­ti­ple hard­ware ven­dors build com­pat­i­ble devices for the gPhone, and let soft­ware devel­op­ers write the appli­ca­tions, as long as Google ser­vices are easy to bun­dle and use.

Build­ing a new national mobile net­work would be an expen­sive propo­si­tion, espe­cially as Sprint con­tin­ues to plan its WiMax strat­egy. See this 28 August arti­cle and this 7 Sep­tem­ber arti­cle, both on Engad­get, for more details. Clear­wire, the cur­rent leader in WiMax deploy­ment, con­tin­ues with its national plans, as I described on 14 June. How­ever, Clear­wire stock took a beat­ing Mon­day, as its joint work with Sprint hasn’t impressed investors yet, accord­ing to a 10 Sep­tem­ber report in Forbes. This 19 July Forbes arti­cle has some addi­tional back­ground on the Sprint-Clearwire national WiMax network.

WiMax makes sense for lap­top users, because a lap­top bat­tery can deal with the radio modem’s power requirements.

Mobile phones need small bat­ter­ies, how­ever, and the ana­log tele­vi­sion spec­trum is an ideal place for res­i­den­tial wire­less con­nec­tiv­ity. If I were run­ning a land­line tele­phone com­pany, I’d be worried.

Tagged as: Apple, Clearwire, cloud, Google, gphone, hardware, iPhone, mobile, software, Sprint, WiFi, WiMax