Windows Phone Thoughts: Google's Android OS Delayed

"Mobile phones under development by Google Inc. and its partners face slipping delivery schedules, with the first phones not likely to arrive until late 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Google had said eight months ago that the first phones to be built under the Android partnership umbrella would come out in the second half of 2008 and commitments from various handset makers and carriers appear to support this initial commitment."



Windows Mobile faces a lot of competition in the marketplace: RIM, Apple, and now Google's Android OS. Windows Mobile devices outsell RIM devices, so the battle with RIM is more about mind-share and dislodging them from the enterprise space. Lately we've talked about the challenges that the iPhone brings to Windows Mobile, so I won't rehash those discussions, but we haven't talked much about Android. The initial demos of it look decent, though nothing too mind-blowing. And there's much more to building a platform that just releasing an OS - how well Android does depends largely on the execution of it's hardware partners, and the quality of the software development that springs up around it. Sound familiar? That's exactly the scenario Windows Mobile has always been in - and we know that hardware can make or break a phone experience.