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The iPhone may be the only game in town for serious mobile Web developers right now, but that won’t last long. Next year, the iPhone will see some serious competition from Google’s Android platform. Of course, T-Mobile will start selling the first Android phone, the G1 made by HTC, on October 22. But other cell phone manufacturers are gearing up for a major Android push.

The most significant of these may come from Motorola. One of the original partners in the Open Handset Alliance behind the open-source mobile OS, Motorola already has 50 people on its Android team and is growing that to 350, according to an Android developer approached by a headhunter to join the team. That is a huge commitment that shows how big a bet Motorola is making on Android.

This same source has also seen people from Nokia and Verizon at a recent Android developer conference. The conference was put on by Google last week for developers who had not yet seen the G1 to help prepare them for its launch. In general, in order to be an attendee, you had to have an Android app. Neither Nokia nor Verizon are official members of the Open Handset Alliance.

Nokia recently acquired the rest of Symbian it didn’t already own, and is determined to keep that OS as long as possible, since it powers all of its S60 phones. But Nokia may have an Android team sniffing around, which is smart even if it is for nothing other than to gain competitive intelligence. And if Android takes off, Nokia could decide to hedge its bets and launch its own Android phone.

There is a certain inexorable logic behind all the interest in Android.

1. It is a more capable mobile Web computer than anything other than the iPhone.
2. It is a very appealing development environment for app creators—and just like on the PC, apps will drive adoption.
3. Most importantly, as an open-source OS, manufacturers don’t have to pay a licensing fee to whoever controls the OS. Given the razor-thin margins in the cell phone business, that alone is reason for manufacturers to embrace Android (with the exception of Nokia, which owns Symbian). But you can see why Motorola might see Android as the key to its recovery.

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1938 Media, the controversial (and hilarious) video blogging site founded by Loren Feldman, has been the center of attention over the last few days. Now big partners are starting to take notice, and Feldman is inking some interesting distribution deals.

The site grew in popularity after Feldman began mixing puppet parody shows into his usual punditry, specifically targeting hyper-sensitive tech industry insiders who were sure to fire back. But those parodies have drawn significant criticism from those targeted as well as a few sympathetic bloggers. In response Feldman agreed to stop some of the harder hitting stuff aimed at social media consultant Shel Israel.

The puppet videos are definitely a hit, however, drawing sponsors and, earlier this month, a distribution deal with CNET.

The CNET deal has yet to go live, and chances are it never will. The recent controversy may have given CNET cold feet. Feldman says the deal is “on hiatus” for now.

But starting today Verizon Wireless’ 3 million mobile VCast users will have access to Feldman’s video content on their phone, as well as 1 million Fios broadband cable subscribers via video on demand. The deal, which will pay Feldman an undisclosed license fee, puts the 1938Media brand next to YouTube, Break.com and other high profile partners.

Effectively Verizon has created a 1938Media channel and has given Feldman the ability to bring in third party video content as well. To start, Mahalo Daily, Revision3, Ze Frank and Jay Grandin content will be included.

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The big winner of the FCC’s $19.6 billion auction of wireless spectrum that ended yesterday is Verizon. That was pretty much everyone’s guess.

At a press conference today, the chairman of the FCC announced that Verizon won six large regional licenses for the most sought-after C-Block of spectrum that will give it a national footprint. It also won 77 smaller licenses in the B-Block. Google did not win any licenses. And AT&T won 227 small licenses, which might be good to fill in areas of coverage where it is currently weak. Satellite TV provider Echostar also won enough licenses to put together a national service,which could expand its ability to offer two-way broadband services. Also, the D-Block reserved for emergency services will be re-auctioned (it didn’t attract the minimum bid).

So it looks like my Mississippi Valley Sneak Attack theory might have been right and it was Verizon that won individual regional licenses instead of taking Google head-on in a bid for the national license (I am still speculating what Google did, but that is what it looks like).

The real winner here is Google precisely because it lost. Google committed to bidding the minimum $4.6 billion that would trigger open device and open application rules that it had lobbied for, but nobody seriously thought it actually wanted to win the auction. Building out and operating a wireless network is a much lower-margin business than search advertising, and even leasing out the spectrum would have been a distraction. But by putting its $4.6 billion on the table early, it was able to dictate the new rules of the game. Rules that Verizon is now stuck with. All Google really wants are broadband wireless networks that cannot discriminate against Google mobile apps or Android phones no matter who operates them.

And what if Google had won? It was never really that risky a move. There are worse places to park your cash than in wireless spectrum, something for which demand is always going up and supply is always going down.

(Photo by Steve Jurvetson)

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Update: It looks like some of us jumped the gun on calling this, including the New York Times. It turns out that there are still enough bidding units left in the C-Block for one or two deep-pocketed companies to still make a bid. So it is not necessarily over yet. Because of the secrecy surrounding the auctions—companies are not allowed to talk about it until it is over—we can only guess what is happening. The post below is entirely speculative.

The most closely-watched part of the wireless auction for the 700 MHz spectrum that started earlier this week appears to be over. The auction for the coveted C-block of spectrum, which is a nationwide license and is subject to special open-device/application rules, might have been won by a $4.7 billion bid—just a smidgen above the $4.6 billion minimum required by the FCC. Until the entire auction is over for the other blocks of spectrum, the FCC won’t disclose who the winner is. But the consensus is that the winner is either Google or Verizon. Update: We’ll see in the following days whether any other bids emerge. This could just be a pause in the bidding.

Bits blogger Saul Hansell at the NYT has been watching the spectrum auction like a hawk. His theory, after looking at the pattern of bidding for the C-block, is that either there were two bidders playing a drawn-out game of chicken or only one bidder slowly raising its price, almost reluctantly. That one bidder could have been Google, which showed its hand earlier by publicly stating it would bid the $4.6 billion minimum to support its suggested open access rules (and stuck by that pledge even though only two of its four suggested rules were adopted ).

Verizon could have sat the auction out, deciding not to bid and instead watch Google squirm as it realized it was the only one in the game. There is a lot of skepticism about how serious Google really is in its desire to actually win the auctions as opposed to influence their outcome and the rules of the game. When it became apparent that there was only one other bidder in the early rounds of the auction, Verizon could have calculated that Google would bid just shy of the $4.6 billion if it realized it was on its own. If that had happened, the FCC would have almost certainly re-auctioned the C-block at a later date without any of those pesky open-device and open-application rules that Verizon really doesn’t like.

But somebody did make the minimum bid, and those rules will be in effect. If Google indeed was the lone bider, it might have just swallowed hard and decided to go ahead and buy the spectrum. Maybe it was worth more to Verizon to see Google pay a $4.7 billion penalty for stepping on its turf than to have the spectrum for itself. Or maybe it wanted the spectrum all along, and it waited until the last minute to put in the minimum bid, betting that Google wouldn’t respond. Either way, Verizon might feel like it snookered Google on this one.

But we’ll all be better off for it because whoever builds the next wireless network on this spectrum won’t be able to discriminate between devices or applications. And if it turns out that Google did in fact win, there would be nothing stopping it from pursuing its two other goals of opening the network up to other service providers through wholesale leasing and other networks (both wireless and wireline) as well. That would help make the wireless world less a collection of silos and more Internet-like.

So who snookered who?

(Photo by Steve Jurvetson)

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In remarks at the Churchill Club, AT&T’s CEO confirmed what most Apple-watchers have been suspecting: a 3G iPhone will come out next year. Sounds like they fixed that battery-drain problem. Hopefully, these things won’t start exploding like those laptops a year ago.

Mike makes fun of me for toting around a Blackberry, but I’d rather wait for the 3G version of the iPhone to come out before thinking about switching. AT&T’s slow-as-molasses EDGE data network cripples the current iPhone (IMHO). The WiFi option for surfing the Web on the iPhone today is a nice backup, but you can’t really count on it for constant mobile connectivity. A 3G iPhone would certainly become yet another Apple lust object/upgrade, but will it be enough to accelerate sales to hit the 10-million mark Steve Jobs set as a goal for next year. It all depends on the price, and you can be sure that isn’t going to be cheap. My guess is $599.

During the same talk, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson also pooh-poohed Verizon’s supposed plans to open up its network. According to Bloomberg:

Stephenson called the Verizon Wireless plan “overblown.” “The industry’s headed that way,” he said. “We are probably one of the most open networks in the world, not just the U.S.”

Thousands of developers create features for AT&T’s network, and consumers can buy phones at the full price if they don’t want to buy a subsidized model and sign a contract to use the company’s wireless service, Stephenson said.

I have my issues with AT&T’s network (slow and spotty coverage in my experience), but at least I can download any app I like to my Blackberry without going through them. The same cannot be said for Verizon, which only allows approved apps on its phones (usually ones where it is getting a cut of the download fees).

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