Google reportedly plans to give multiple mobile device makers early access to its next version of Android in an attempt to create a more robust ecosystem to take on Apple and also to reassure partners that its Motorola Mobility acquisition won’t squeeze them out.
The new strategy would be a major shift away from Google’s current practice of working with a single maker of smartphones or tablets on a “lead device” based on a new Android release, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday , citing unnamed sources.
Google’s strategy with its Android mobile operating system has already shifted several times over the years. In early 2010, the search giant produced its own co-branded Android-based smartphone, the Nexus One but had shut down that venture by the summer of that year as sales of other Android-based phones began to take off.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Google was planning to once again begin selling co-branded Android-based devices built by third-party device makers through its own online store. Another take on that report was that Google would manufacture its own Android tablets this year through Motorola Mobility, the consumer arm of Motorola that Googleacquired for $12.5 billion in 2011, and sell them in the online store.
But if that venture remains on track, it seems Google may want to involve key hardware partners in the launch of new Android products instead of hitting the market first with its own in-house devices or smartphones and tablets built by a single partner.
Google could launch new devices running its next version of Android, dubbed Jellybean, with as many as five manufacturers, according to the WSJ, which said a source described a “portfolio of ‘Nexus’ lead devices that include smartphones and tablets” that’s due to arrive by Thanksgiving.
Those smartphones and tablets would be sold unlocked in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, via the Google online store and through certain retailers, the newspaper reported. Buyers would have to fork out more for a device and purchase contracts from carriers separately, but users would also be able to run apps like Google Wallet that are blocked by some carriers on subsidized phones, the WSJ noted.
Google also “hopes the effort will help rev up sales of Android-powered tablets, which have lagged behind Apple’s iPad and Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire,” the paper reported.