Androids, iPhones and WiMAX update from November 2007

It’s been an eventful week in the wild world of telecoms. Google set the pace on Monday with the launch of Android and the Open Handset Alliance, which has been met with mixed reception:

Bill Weinberg, general manager of the LiPS Forum, is a bit mixed up about the whole thing, mainly because he wears so many Linux hats.

While Stuart Carlaw, research director at ABI Research warns that Symbian’s apparently arrogant attitude towards Android could be its downfall.

Later on in the week, Nokia and Vodafone struck a deal to get Nokia’s Ovi platform pride of place on a number of exclusive Vodafone handsets, which got Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis wondering whether Nokia would ever be really controversial with Ovi and start to include VoIP applications on the platform?

And finally the week rounded off with the cancellation of Sprint and Clearwire’s joint WiMAX rollout. Bad news for WiMAX, but not the only bad news for Sprint. Patti Reali and Tole Hart over at Gartner note that Sprint’s jointt venture with the US cable companies for wireless and wireline integration is also in danger of falling apart. While the company’s Pivot FMC solution is also becoming unhinged.

Oh, and as if we needed any more reminding, the iPhone is going to hit the UK and Germany on Friday night. Jonathan Arber at Ovum discusses the hype.

Here in London people are already queuing outside the Apple shop on Regent Street. A word of advice to anyone looking to get one quickly tonight, when I walked past the O2 shop on Oxford Street a couple of hours ago, there was not a soul to be seen. No queue!

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