Global Equities Research’s analyst Trip Chowdhry today reported that Google Android based cellphones, being built by various handset makers, could be delayed from an end-of -year introduction to sometime later in the first quarter of next year. This will be contrary to what HTC’s CFO Hui-ming Cheng said last week. According to Cheng, the company would begin shipping Android-based handsets to ODM clients in fourth quarter of this year as scheduled.
Trip says the issues behind the delay are following: handset maker High Tech Computer (HTCKF) is having structural problems to incorporate Google’s demanded feature set; HTC is demanding a guaranteed minimum revenue surety from Google, from which Chowdhry concludes that “Probably HTC does not think there will be enough demand for Google phone.”
Industrial sources have told Trip that Google’s OS for the phone, Android is not attracting enough developers, because most of the developers are either working on established platforms like Microsoft, BlackBerry and Symbian or are interested in developing for fast rising Apple iPhone platform.
[Via Barron’s]