After much anticipation from the mobile industry, T-Mobile has officially announced that it will release the first Google Android-powered handset on Oct. 22.

It will be availble to the carrier's subscribers in the United States and Europe. The T-Mobile G1 combines full touch-screen functionality and a QWERTY keyboard with a mobile Web experience that includes Google products, such as Google Maps Street View, Gmail, YouTube and one-touch access to Google Search.

"The unveiling of the T-Mobile G1, the first mobile phone based on the Android platform from the Google-spawned Open Handset Alliance, or OHA, may be the beginning of a significant movement towards a situation in which a majority of mobile phones will run a high-level operating system, rather than the variety of real-time operating systems currently powering more than 85 percent of the world's mobile phones," said Kevin Burden, director of mobile devices for ABI Research, Oyster Bay, NY.

The T-Mobile G1 is also the first phone to provide access to Android Market, where customers can find and download unique applications to expand and personalize their mobile phone.

Google's Android platform -- and Android Market in particular -- could have a deep impact on the mobile marketing ecosystem (see story).

In 2007, T-Mobile became a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, an initiative that is committed to greater openness in the mobile industry.

T-Mobile claims that it supports increased openness because it will foster rapid innovation to best meet consumer demands.

The T-Mobile G1 with Google is the first commercially available phone to run on the Android operating system, which is open source.

The goal of Android is to empower developers with tools to create and offer consumers applications that add value to their handsets.

Gmail is built on 'embedded WebViews', the real-time push features and synchronization use the multi-tasking capabilities of the platform, and the integration between applications relies on the 'Android Application Framework'.

With single sign-in, consumers can log in to their Google account and have instant access to Google products.

If consumers don't have a Google account yet, they can set one up on their mobile phone.

Consumers' emails, contacts, calendar entries and Google Talk chats are fully synchronized with Gmail and Calendar on the Web.

New events are pushed in real-time to consumers' T-Mobile G1 phone and any changes they make on-the-go are immediately available on the Web.

If consumers ever lose or break their phone, Google claims that all their data is safe and secure in the cloud.

Search is now available as a feature in many applications, including non-Google ones, such as the music player.

While consumers are listening to a song -- like something from Sonic Youth -- they can 'long-press' the artist's name.

They will see a menu pop up that lets them search Google for the Sonic Youth Wikipedia entry, or search YouTube for their music videos.

The contact application lets them see their friend's IM status, view his address on a map and communicate with him using Gmail or Google Talk, in addition to calling or texting him.

If Google's intentions behind Android and the formation of the OHA are indeed about leading the industry towards common standards that halt further fragmentation so that its services have a broad base to work on, its emphasis will be on the high-volume feature phone market rather than pitting the G1 against lower-volume smartphones that offer similar functionality.

Since consumers buy mobile phones, not operating systems, the ultimate goal of the OHA is that consumers will eventually buy an Android-based phone without necessarily intending to buy a software-heavy handset.

Marketing based on capabilities has brought the smartphone market to less than 15 percent of worldwide handset sales.

"If Android is going to pay off for Google and OHA, subscribers will need to start buying smartphones without fully realizing what they just purchased," Burden said.