Samsung Android at Barcelona a figment of your imagination
Samsung has pulled not its much-expected new Android phone from the Mobile World Congress which opens in Barcelona today. It was never there. Either the company misspoke or we misunderstood.
The four-day event in Barcelona brings together 60,000 industry insiders from 1200 companies. Many are still hoping to see new Android phones from companies such as Motorola, LG and HTC (deja vu replayed).
But Samsung was presumed to be the furthest down development trail, and its withdrawal — following the Kogan debacle in Australia has shaken some observers’ confidence in the Google phone concept.
Samsung says the fault lies with us. We simply do not understand. Samsung wants to clear up all of those rumors about their Android phones being ‘delayed.’ For quite a while, conventional wisdom had it that Samsung would introduce a phone running Google’s Android OS at the Mobile World Congress trade show this week. Then Samsung exec Younghee Lee told the British Guardian that there would be no such phone, prompting everyone to call the phone ‘delayed.’
A foolish error.
Today Samsung’s Kim Titus said that the phone isn’t delayed — they never planned to show an Android phone at MWC. It’s not their fault if we were all jumping to conclusions, basically.
‘Somebody decided that we had said we were going to show Android here and then said we weren’t. We never said we were going to show Android, and we were never planning to. There’s no delay, and we’re on track to launch later this year as expected,’ he said. And what cynical journalist would not believe such an honest, outright, forthright, downright statement?. Which could have been made weeks ago.
Many attendees will cram in today to hear what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has to say at his keynote: a Microsoft phone seems unlikely, but there’s likely to be major improvements to the Windows Mobile operating system, which has been outshone by Apple’s iPhone, Android and the forthcoming Palm Pre in the smartphone department. Also expected: MyPhone: a Web synching service.
Android continues to do fall short of any targets whatsoever month after month after month. It is probably the fault of all those ill-ke[yIt is almost as if the operating system is jinxed in some way. Yet it has so much going for it, so much promise.
Will we see an Android? Yes. But perhaps not until near the end of the year.
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February 15th, 2009
You need to get your WM Story straight.
myphone is just one thing we are expecting.
A fuller list would be:
My Phone – cloud back-up and content access.
Outlook Live – Push e-mail for the rest of us.
MarketPlace – A windows mobile app store
Zune integration.
So expect a bit more than myPhone.