Google's GPhone reportedly to be announced Monday

Google’s GPhone may be coming Monday.

Google will announce a partnership Monday with “various handset makers and cellphone operators around the world” that will push Google’s open source phone operating system, according to a business technology blog on the Wall Street Journal Online. 

T-Mobile and Sprint are the most likely U.S. carriers to be involved, but there could be others, writes Wall Street Journal reporter Amol Sharma. Phones using Google’s open platform for cell phone applications won’t actually hit the market until at least mid-2008, he reports.

“While Sprint appears to be agreeing to work with Google to put the Web giant’s new Linux-based open operating system into phones, T-Mobile will probably go even further: The company has worked with Google for months on plans to build Google-powered phones with a variety of Google software and applications,” the Journal reports.

Taiwan’s HTC is likely to partner with Google on handsets, while other possibilities include Samsung, LG, and SonyEricsson, the report states.

“What will the impact be? Well, Google is trying to remake cell phones in the model of the Web, making them as open as possible to new applications in areas like social networking and map-based services,” the Journal writes. “It’s too early to tell whether this will be a revolution in cell phones – or just an evolution that improves on the relatively open platforms already out there, like rival Microsoft’s Windows mobile.”

While Google appears set to announce its phone plans Monday, it could be later. “It’s always possible the announcement’s timing could change, but Monday looks like the day at this point,” Sharma writes.

While the GPhone is likely to draw comparison’s to Apple’s iPhone, Google’s focus is quite different. Instead of building a phone itself, Google is creating software to be used by mobile carriers and mobile advertisers, an attempt to dominate the mobile advertising market.