LG and Google: the LGooGLe or GoogLe phone?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Thursday, 29 March 2007

No, LG isn’t manufacturing the rumored Google Phone, but will start bundling several Google apps on their phones, fresh from doing a similar deal with Yahoo! at the recent 3GSM.

Both Google and Yahoo! have been busy in recent months signing up deals with major mobile phone manufacturers to get their software onto phones as both companies race to dominate search and more on that most portable of voice and data platforms, the mobile phone.

Of course Microsoft is no slouch in this area, working as hard as they can to deliver the same services to mobile devices.

Google’s deal with LG will see well known Google services such as search, Blogger, Gmail, Google News and Google Maps applications being preloaded onto LG phones later in 2007, in the US, Europe and Asia.

There’s no word on YouTube being offered, but given that a YouTube application is available for Nokia phones, there’s no reason why a YouTube channel shouldn’t be offered, if not now, then sometime in the not-too-distant future, as long as LG wants it and believes their customers want it too.

LG is the fifth largest cell phone maker in the world, as they battle against Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and Pocket PC companies such as HTC, Dopod, iMate, HP, O2 and others, including Apple from June onwards.

Of course, LG had its own massive share of publicity when they announced the touch-screen controlled LG Prada, a phone that looked quite similar to Apple’s iPhone, at least superficially.

How popular the new Google software that will be pre-loaded on 10 LG phones to be released this year to consumers is yet to be seen, but already many Google services can be access on your existing phone, as long as you’re willing to pay high prices for data transfers on most 3G plans.

At least having the relevant Google apps already pre-loaded into the phone will make it easier to actually use them, and mobile broadband prices are finally starting to come down, which is something that will cause users to use their cell phones more than ever before!

Of course, given LG’s advertising deal with Yahoo!, the inclusion of Google software as well means that a furure LG phone may well have both Yahoo! and Google mobile broadband software, letting consumers choose the web search and the Google and Yahoo services they desire, even being easily able to dip into one aspect from Google and another from Yahoo.

It’s called choice, and consumers like having it!
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