iPhone gets ringing endorsement from Google, literally
By John Pospisil
The CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, used ring tones from his personal iPhone to make key points during a recent presentation in Paris.
Schmidt, who is also on the board of Apple, said the iPhone was a “powerful new device” that will be “particularly good” for some forthcoming applications from Google.
“You should expect other announcements from the two companies over time,” he said.
iPhone’s support of Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the de facto standard programming language of Web 2.0, means that developers will be able to develop applications that easily run iPhone, as well as other Ajax-supporting mobile devices.
From launch the iPhone will have built in support for Google services, with users being able to make phone calls from within Google Maps, for example.
In his presentation Schmidt also emphasized his belief that Internet-enabled mobile phones were the key to getting more people online, and hence the key to getting more people to use Google.
“I travel a lot and the metaphor I hear is a mobile phone. There are 2.4 billion mobiles in use today — it took 20 years to get to one billion and four years to get to two billion,” he said.
While the iPhone is set to launch in the US on June 29, a date has not been set for the iPhone launch in the UK, but it is expected to be later this year.
The retail price of the iPhone in the US will be US$499 for the 4GB version, and US$599 for the 8GB version. At these prices, iPhone users will be bound to a two year service contact with mobile phone network AT&T, which has a five year exclusive deal with Apple to distribute the iPhone in the US. Details of the service contracts have not yet been released.
As time passes it seems that Apple-Google affiliation is getting stronger and stronger, but then as the saying goes, my enemy’s enemy is my friend, and both Google and Apple a common enemy in the form of Microsoft.
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