The G1, With Google Android
Androids
The G1 from T-Mobile is the first available phone that uses Google’s Android operating system. Think of it as the iPhone for the rest of us. The phone itself is made by HTC, a leading maker of smartphones. It is currently only available through T-Mobile, following the Apple model of locking in with a services provider.
Hopefully that will change soon.
Within days of being available for pre-sale, T-Mobile had to triple their original order for the phones, selling more than 1.5 million units. Add in another 1 million pre-orders from T-Mobile retail outlets and the demand grows to more than two and a half million phones already sold.
With some analysts predicting that iPhone sales would top 16 million units in 2008, the 2.5 million pre-orders for the G1 may not sound impressive. But when you consider that the phone is not even being shipped yet, that’s a sign of pretty strong demand for the alternative product.
With the biggest retail shopping days of the year still ahead of us, it’s possible that the G1 could double that number to 5 million units. That would give an estimated yearly sales rate of more than 20 million phones, dwarfing the groundbreaking iPhone.
I am Jon, and yeah, I’ll probably own one of these. I’ll be an Android.
