Google: We’re not making Android hardware

Last week, TheStreet.com reported that Google plans to sell a Google-developed mobile phone, in store this year; bypassing the carriers with its own Android has been implemented. But Rubin, Vice President of Engineering at Google for Android, ridiculed the idea that the company would “compete with its customers” by publishing his own mobile phone.

“We’re not hardware,” said Rubin. “We build for the other equipment.”

Now, Google has a role in the design phones, with Android, G1 and played. For example, Google has promoted the infamous design on the G1, at its request, a phone with a keyboard than five lines, supply Rubin on the basis of said hinge. The design has not been appreciated by critics, however, Rubin and joked that maybe why Google should not make their own hardware.

But to push a design feature is very different from designing a complete phone, build a contract with a manufacturing partner, and you work on distribution channels to bring it to market. The “fundamental change” in the business model is Google, Rubin said, and that the company does not appear to be ready at this point to make.

Rumors of a so-called “Gphone” date back years, long before Google formally announced Android in November 2007.But Google’s strategy has so far played a more traditional volume licensing, working with hardware and carrier partners too far and wide as the mobile operating system Android choice, rather than following the example of Apple with a complete hardware and software design as iPhone.

Almost two years later, the software is rounding into form with the release of several phones this year, with the imminent release of the Motorola Droid, the 2.0 runs on the Verizon Android.