iPhone, gPhone, hyPhone

The iPhone buzz is still around. It has been around for the last two years or so. I was a little shocked to hear David Yoffie from Harvard calculated the iPhone hype brought $400 million to Apple in publicity. "It's unprecedented", he said. Well... Apple knows how to build tension, utilize viral marketing and grow hype. All the modern marketing tools are mastered to perfection by Steve Jobs and his team. Hype, when properly used, is an extremely strong tool.

But as the iPhone is partly behind us (we already know it is there and more or less what to expect), there are rumors emerging about the Google Phone (or gPhone if you like). The first ones surfaced two years ago when Google bought Android, including Andy Rubin, who had previous track record starting Danger and letting out the Sidekick. The Sidekick aimed at reshaping mobile Internet. And what is more important to Google now? After capturing our PCs and browsers, Google's next target has to be the mobile communicators.

The Android acquisition was as silent as possible and the entire company is operating under the covers. But rumors are alive and after the Apple iPhone everybody silently expects a breakthrough device from "G". The buzz went up last week when the new Google mobile phone patent was discovered. The patented idea is to use as many hints as possible to aid users and anticipate what they are about to do with the device, simplifying the information entry process (that is very cumbersome on a handheld device).

The scenario described by mad4mobilephones goes like that.

Imagine that you are planning a night out in London. At 6pm Google could predict you are looking for a restaurant and, given your history of looking for directions to Chinese restaurants every week, would select an array of suitable places for you to eat. At 9pm you would turn your phone on again and Google would know you wanted bars near the restaurant. At 11pm Google again predicts you need a list of local taxi firms.

Very googly indeed... So who knows? Is this going to be one of applications available on the iPhone when it ships or are we to wait for the real gPhone to arrive? Anyway... let the rumors out and earn some dollars :P