14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of last year, Google and Orange were said to be negotiating terms of a multi-billion dollar partnership that would have as a result a Google phone bearing the Orange brand, manufactured by Taiwan's HTC. Since then, the Google phone was pretty much morphed into everything, first believed to be a multimedia powerhorse, iPhone-killer, then Blackberry-like device, and now, from the last info, merely an entry-level phone for emerging markets.
Basically no one knows what to believe anymore, and if Google aims to confuse and mislead customers in order to distract them from what they're actually preparing, they're doing a great job.
Now, according to Digitimes, Google is actually aiming to release a phone that's manufactured by HTC and will end up being offered through Orange.
According to 'component makers' the shipment volume will reach as high as one million units and the handset will be launched at the end of this year. This rumor is very likely untrue for several reasons.
HTC is a smartphone manufacturer. The Google phone, on the other hand, is meant to be an entry-level device. HTC was never known to make entry-level phones. Moreover, HTC has produced smartphones for Orange, sold under the SPV brand, many times before.
So chances are that this smartphone, soon to be launched on Orange will be just another SPV with pre-installed Google applications. A Google phone might actually hit the market soon, and the search engine company has never kept its interest in the mobile industry a secret. But there are so many rumors regarding this phone, that there's no way to tell which one, if any, is actually true.