T-Mobile CTO: 40% of Q4 sales will be smartphones

SAN FRANCISCO--During a keynote address at the Open Mobile Summit 2009 conference here, T-Mobile USA CTO Cole Brodman touted his company's "belief in the power of open," and argued the carrier had supported the concept long before some of its competitors. Specifically, Brodman noted T-Mobile was the first carrier to launch an Android handset in the U.S. with its debut of the G1 device a year ago. And that push will continue: He said the company will have four Android handsets available this holiday season, with that number doubling to eight in the first six months of 2010.

Brodman also said that T-Mobile believes that 2009 is the "year of the smartphone," and expects that 40 percent of its sales in the fourth quarter will be smartphones, the majority of which will be devices with Android and BlackBerry operating systems.

Android clearly plays a big role in T-Mobile's future. Brodman said Android users consume 50 times the data of others, which is both a challenge (from a network capacity standpoint) and a huge benefit. "It's great to make products that people want to consume," he said.

Brodman provided some other interesting Android tidbits:

• Half the customers using Android devices visit the Android Marketplace once a day
• 80 percent of Android users browse at least once a day, with two-thirds browsing numerous times per day
• Nearly half of the carrier's HTC myTouch 3G users customize their phone with applications
• More than 40 percent of Android users access social networking sites multiple times per day

T-Mobile plans to continue to work closely with Google on the Android Marketplace. Brodman said that on Nov. 17 T-Mobile will debut a channel in the Marketplace that will feature and recommend certain apps to T-Mobile customers. Brodman also said that T-Mobile customers will be able to download a paid app from this T-Mobile channel and it will be posted to their T-Mobile bill.

"We think the carrier billing platform is a great way to collect payment for paid apps on behalf of our partners," Brodman said.

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