The world's first mobile phone powered by Google's Android OS is making waves before it is even available in stores. T-Mobile, the US carrier that gets the G1 Android phone first, has announced that "heavy demand" has claimed all presale units. If the current smartphone market trends are any indication, the future may be bright for the G1 and other Android phones.
Revealed after much hype on September 23, the HTC-built G1 phone for T-Mobile brings a new smartphone formula to the table, one founded upon Google's open-source Android OS for mobile phones. The device offers key features like Google app integration, an open Android Marketplace for finding and installing new software, applications that can run in the background, and even Amazon's MP3 music store for purchasing DRM-free music on the go. In the increasingly competitive smartphone marketplace, the open-platform G1 is an almost exact antithesis to Apple's alluring iPhone—the device that arguably set the standard for more powerful handsets, but one that is also completely locked down by its manufacturer.
T-Mobile began taking preorders for the G1 after its announcement, and the carrier quickly ran out of the initial batch. The carrier is now claiming that G1 presales are better than anticipated, since HTC tripled production for launch day and preorders have been filled for those as well. T-Mobile told Ars that preorders will be taken through October 21 for delivery at a later date.
Actual sales figures from the preorder rush are not being disclosed yet, however. There is no word on exactly how large T-Mobile's initial batch of G1 phones actually was, but HTC announced recently that it plans on selling 400,000 to 500,000 units during the fourth quarter of the year. It also disclosed that T-Mobile is planning to order as many as two million G1s "in the near future." A T-Mobile spokesperson would only tell Ars Technica that "we expect T-Mobile G1 will be a very popular device, particularly with the holiday season on the horizon."
HTC's aspirations for the G1 may not be far off. The iPhone, which had enormous buzz surrounding its launch in June 2007, sold 273,000 units in its first weekend on the market, but took about two and a half months to sell a million units. There is more than one winner in the new smartphone race, though, as sales of all smartphones are up. BlackBerry overtook Nokia in the US in the second quarter of 2008, the iPhone snagged nearly 30 percent of the US smartphone market in only a year, and Windows Mobile grew its global market share from 11 to 13 percent in Microsoft's last fiscal year ending June 30, 2008.
Along with Android's appealing features and promising prospects, these numbers spell opportunity for the G1 to carve out a respectable niche. Though Android's current lack of Exchange support may prevent it from landing any business purchase orders, its open platform means that a third party is welcome to build support and open that door for businesses. That kind of open access will certainly be a key to Android's long-term prospects.
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