There’s been a lot of speculation on the Yahoo message boards about Google Inc (GOOG) announcing their entry into the wireless handset market and the possibility of a Gphone ending up in consumers hands in the near future. While this specualtion has led to unbridled enthusiasm amongst investors looking to cash in on Google’s potential value, the reality has set in that Google will not be releasing a Gphone anytime in the near future. Instead they’ve chosen to announce The Open Handset Alliance to create an open platform (to be called Android) for a Linux phone that can run mobile Google apps and others. The 34 partners include T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, NTT Docomo, China Mobile, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Qualcomm, Intel, and Google itself. No mention of Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, or Nokia (which is pushing its own Ovi development platform).

There was also a great deal of speculation regarding Google bidding on the FCC’s last available wireless spectrum but it doesn’t look like that deal is going to go through and more than likely that bandwidth will fall into the hands of At&T who are currently backing Apple’s iPhone. In many investor circles, it almost seemed like overkill for Google to try and muscle into the handset market with the recent success of the iPhone considering the iPhone is already equipped to utilize many of Google’s online services such as Google Maps. Wheras Apple has a strong, loyal and well established user base for any hardware they release, Google is more well known for their sorftware and marketing applications and the concept of them moving into a hardware based market would surely be riddled with techincal support problems amongst other support related issues. Google is not known for their customer support, as many Adwords advertisers and Adwords publishers are well aware of. Here’s the skinny from the insiders.

Andy Rubin, the man behind the Google Phone has the following to say :

Despite all of the very interesting speculation over the last few months, we’re not announcing a Gphone. However, we think what we are announcing — the Open Handset Alliance and Android — is more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine today Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.

More information is available at TechCrunch Blog : Breaking: Google Announces Android and Open Handset Alliance