HTC to ship 50,000 pointless Googlephones
A UBS analyst is spreading rumors that Taiwanese manufacturer HTC will ship 50,000 cell phones running Google's mobile operating system by the end of the year. That's not so hard to believe. Just don't call the devices Googlephones. We've been saying for months there is no such thing as a Googlephone, or an OS, really — instead, it's just cell-phone-optimized services from Google. The low order number just confirms that Google knows it can't be a player in the hardware business. Expect the user interface on the phones to look a lot like Google Docs for Mobile, a wireless version of Google's Web-apps suite launched today. And here's a question: If we can run Google Docs on any phone, why would we — or Google — need a Googlephone? Right. That's what we've been telling you all along.