According to several sources, Dell will announce a partnership with Google to produce the “gPhone”. Industry speculation that Google’s mobile phone announcement would be hardware, a Google phone, fell flat on it’s face when Google instead announced the open source android mobile platform. Our guess? This latest speculation will fall flat on it’s face as well.

A hardware partnership with Dell simply doesn’t make sense for Google. Dell simply isn’t a leading mobile hardware creator and Google has plenty of capable partners in the Open Handset Alliance such as HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung. So why all the rumors?

We’re guessing that the announcement of a Google and Dell partnered gPhone is being confused with a Dell announcement that they will create at least one mobile phone specifically for the android platform. And that is a HUGE difference. The probable (mis)information leak could have actually been framed by Dell to create buzz around an upcoming mobile lineup. After all, they could certainly use the buzz… does anyone actually know Dell makes phones? These partnership downfalls were also cited in a ComputerWorld article.
The Mobile World Congress, the leading trade show for the mobile industry, takes place February 11th to 14th in Barcelona. We’re expecting this rumor to be sorted out there. You can certainly expect an announcement from Dell, who up to this point has denied the rumors. Just expect the announcement to be an internal mission to create handsets for Android rather than a partnership with Google to create a joint product.