AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier of Apple’s iPhone, has finally decided to get its hands on the Google’s popular open source operating system, as the carrier plans to introduce five Android powered handsets within the first half of this year.The announcement was made by AT&T’s Chief Executive Ralph de la Vega at the Consumer Electronic Show held in Las Vegas. Three of these devices, including the innovative Motorola Backflip smartphone, Dell’s first Android based handset and a new HTC smartphone, will be exclusive to the AT&T network. It is said that the company is trying to diversify from the iPhone, as its exclusive deal with Apple is apparently not going to last forever.
With AT&T’s entry, all four major wireless service providers of the nation – AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint – will offer some handsets running the Android software. The first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, made its debut on T-Mobile back in October 2008, which was less than one and a half years ago. And currently, there are already about 20 Android handsets on the market, including the just-released Nexus One, Google’s first own-brand smartphone, and the Motorola Droid, Verizon’s flagship device against AT&T’s iPhone.
In the meantime, AT&T also plans to launch two devices running Palm’s WebOS operating system. There are two WebOS based devices, the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi, on the market. They are now both offered in the U.S. exclusively by Sprint, but are coming to Verizon by the end of January.
In related news, AT&T announced that they now support access to Nokia’s Ovi Store. AT&T customers who use Nokia E71x, Mural, Surge, 6550, 6555 or 6350 devices will be able to buy applications from the Ovi Store and benefit from convenient automatic carrier billing. More upcoming devices for the carrier will also support this feature.
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