T-Mobile sells 1 millionth G1 Android phone

Since its debut in October 2008, T-Mobile has sold more than 1 million G1 Android smartphones based on the Google Android operating system, while consumer interest for the device remains high.

T-Mobile plans to move several other smartphones over to the Android OS, with Google and the open source community ironing out several recently discovered bugs.  T-Mobile is currently the fourth-largest wireless provider in the United States, and hopes future Google-based mobile phones will help it attract new users. 

Around two-thirds of phones on T-Mobile’s 3G network reportedly are G1 phones, with both companies relying heavily on it.  The 3G network is available for 107 million people, which is significantly lower than Verizon Wireless and AT&T, but the company continues to expand 3G coverage.

Despite success since late 2008, Android has a lot of work to do to catch up to the Research in Motion (RIM) OS and iPhone OS, which dominate the market with 22 percent and 50 percent marketshare.

In addition to Android increasing its mobile marketshare, it seems PC manufacturers also are interested in using it for netbooks.  Hewlett-Packard announced earlier in the month that it could use Android for a few netbooks later down the road, but official confirmation hasn’t been issued.

"There are announcements happening between now and the end of the year that are quite significant from operators and new hardware partners in the Android space, which I won’t preannounce except to say that they really do fulfill much of the vision that we laid out more than a year ago," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement. "On the netbook side, there are a number of people who have actually taken Android and ported it over to netbook or netbook-similar devices."