Planet Mobile comes down to (Google) Earth

We wrote before that in our opinion, the Future of Mobile is no longer with the traditional mobile players. Google will now be bidding for spectrum. Add that to their Android open mobile interface and Apple proving you can build a mobile phone for web use, this will we suspect drive some major behaviour changes over 2008.

Verizon has already altered course, we suspect most of the rest will do so - though some (those without hybrid networks) are strategically very exposed.

Sez Google:

We already know that regardless of which bidders ultimately win the auction, consumers will be the real winners either way. This is because the eventual winner of a key portion of this spectrum will be required to give its customers the right to download any application they want on their mobile device, and the right to use any device they want on the network (assuming the C Block reserve price of $4.6 billion is met in the auction). That's meaningful progress in our ongoing efforts to help transform the relatively closed wireless world to be more like the open realm of the Internet.

Its the start of a "Microsoft De Facto standard" play rather than a pure open play, but the Mobile industry has desperately needed even this level of rationaisation, so its still Good News for Users !!