The Wall Street Journal is running a story about the status of Google’s Android powered handsets. According to the financial newspaper, Google has initially planned to unveil the new handsets with Android in the second half of this year, but apparently those who are eager to buy them will have to wait until the last quarter.

Quoting anonymous sources familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal said that T-Mobile expects to deliver an Android-powered phone in the fourth period, while Sprint Nextel won't be able to launch such a device this year.

Also, China Mobile, another Google partner in the Android project, will delay the launch of the Android-powered devices until early 2009.

The Android platform was officially launched last year, on November 5, as a result of a collaboration between Google and HTC, Intel, Motorola, T-Mobile, nVIDIA and Qualcomm, with one sole purpose: to develop open standards for mobile devices. Google is working on boosting the quality of Web browsing, enhancing the audio and video experience for mobile phones.

The Linux-based Android has opened up broad flexibility and ease of development for handset makers, and it is certain that the consumers will eventually benefit greatly from the new features and the efficiency of the hardware use by the upcoming Android handsets.

The Android platform features an application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components, a Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices, optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional), media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF) and few other things like Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent) and camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent).

Last month, at Google I/O conference, Google offered a live demo of Android on an unbranded mobile device.

The presentation featured touch screen capabilities for a wide range of applications and Web services (which got everyone thinking about the iPhone). In addition to that, with the help of its compass feature, which includes an accelerometer, Google’s Street View allows the user to orient the view as he turns the device.

During the keynote, Andy Rubin, director of mobile platforms at Google, said consumers can expect to see the Android available on mobile phones in the second half of 2008, emphasizing that security, unlike in older platforms, will not be an issue anymore.

But now speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Andy Rubin, explained that managing the software-development effort while giving its partners the opportunity to lobby for new features takes time. "This is where the pain happens," he says. "We are very, very close."

Meanwhile, Apple was moving fast with its new iPhone. Earlier this month, Apple has met all analysts' expectations in terms of announcements at the 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference. There will be a 3G iPhone coming in a month, which will be at half price ($199 for the 8Gb), and the iPhone 2.0 firmware is also around the corner with significant improvements.

The iPhone 2.0 firmware is the enterprise-oriented update which tries to snatch customers away from the likes of BlackBerry by adding previously unavailable features on Apple's gadget such as interoperability with corporate email systems. There is also VPN, support for Microsoft Office and iWork documents, as well as other improvements.

Steve Jobs also officially opened the Apple Store which will be the place where iPhone owners will get their third-party apps.

Also, Android will have to compete with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6. Last month, Eddie Wu, the software managing director of OEM embedded devices from Microsoft said the company expects to sell at least 20 million devices based on Windows Mobile, following the 11 million units sold in the 2006-2007 fiscal year.

Microsoft is working with mobile phone makers such as Motorola, HTC, Samsung Electronics and Asustek Computer.