Two months ago, when Australian phone company Kogan Technologies said it would launch the second Android mobile operating system-based handset called Agora it came as a surprise to industry watchers.
The announcement from a hitherto unknown company from Down Under was on the heels of the October launch of the first HTC G1 phone.
Now Kogan’s founder Ruslan Kogan says the Agora phone will be "delayed indefinitely due to potential future interoperability issues."
"The Agora reached a very late stage of development, manufacturing
had commenced and we were within days of shipping the product to
customers. But it now seems certain the current Agora specifications
will limit its compatibility or interoperability in the near future,"
Ruslan Kogan said in a statement.
Still, the cancellation of the Agora phone, which was supposed to start shipping later this month, should not be a setback to the fledgling Android OS movement. It is also unlikely to slow down the momentum of new Android-based handsets in the market, says one analyst.
Major cellphone makers including Motorola and Sony Ericsson are betting on Android and are likely to release Android devices later this year.
Kogan itself has been seen as an unlikely candidate to create a new phone. The company has no experience in making cellphones and is known in Australia for selling LCD TVs and cameras at much lower prices than competitors but eschewing the retail store model for online sales.
Cellphones, however, are much more complex than LCD TVs and more difficult to pull off for a new company.
"I think the idea of someone no one ever heard of picking up Android and
making their dream device was such a techno-romance story, that it
really captured a lot of imaginations," says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research on his blog. "In the end, it’s a lot harder to
get into the handset business even with an open source mobile platform
to build on top of."
Meanwhile Kogan’s customers who had pre-paid for the Agora will be offered a full refund, said the company. And the phone is expected to undergo
a significant redesign "in order to ensure its compatibility with all
future Android applications."
"One potential issue is that developers may create applications for
the Android operating system at a higher resolution and screen size
than the Agora provides in its current form," said Kogan.
A redesigned Agora may never make it to the market but for Android lovers its not the end of hope. Bigger cellphone makers are waiting in the wings to pick up the slack.
See also:
Aussie Googlephone announced
T-Mobile Store Opens Doors to G1 Phone
Photo: Kogan Agora Pro (momentimedia/Flickr)
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