Google to unveil its own phone by next year

LONDON: Popular search engine major Google is hoping to launch a mobile phone by early next year that will allows users to surf the internet on the move.

According to the Telegraph, the company hopes that its “GPhone” will be as popular as the Apple iPhone which was launched in the United States in June.

Google services, such as its search engine, e-mail and interactive maps, will be loaded on to the phone. It is thought Google will derive its revenue from the lucrative mobile advertising market.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, was quoted by the paper as saying recently that mobile phone adverts are “twice as profitable or more than non-mobile phone ads because they are more personal”.

Research a telecoms analyst, forecast that the market for mobile advertising will be worth more than $5.4 billion a year by 2011.