Google Phones Running Behind Schedule

It turns out revolutionizing the mobile-phone industry isn’t as easy as Google thought it would be. The first phones to bear the search giant’s much-anticipated Android platform won’t ship until the fourth quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports, because carriers are having trouble customizing the software. Many despair of having Android offerings at all in 2008.

T-Mobile should have an Android phone out by the fourth quarter, but Google has been working so hard on it that the company has neglected Sprint, which will likely have to wait until 2009—as might China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier. The main problem is carriers wanting to brand and tweak Android’s features. “This is where the pain happens,” says Google’s mobile director. “We are very, very close.” (More Google Android stories.)