UPDATE: The Motley Fool has recently contacted us with regard to the 1.5 mln sales figure featured in the article, specifying this was intended to be a figurative representation rather than an official pre-order figure. The article has since been corrected — we are sorry for any inconvenience.

According to an article appeared on finance-related website The Motley Fool, T-Mobile has already managed to sell out the first two batches of G1 preorders which, as the site speculated, could roughly equate to as much as 1.5 mln units, a figure significantly better than expected as the official launch date for the US market, October 22nd, is nearing.

During its presentation three weeks ago, T-Mobile spokesmen introduced the G1 as a revolutionary smart phone with unique features and a highly competitive price — $179 vs iPhone's $199 and a cheaper voice and data plans. The G1 features a full slide-out QWERTY plastic keyboard, WI-Fi radio capabilities, GPS transceiver, high resolution built-in camera and many of Apple iPhone's characteristics, making the two likely competitors in the profitable smart phone industry.

According to many analysts, Google needs the G1 to be a hit, given the interest of the media around the Android open platform: a weak debut could in fact sort a negative effect on the Android platform, maybe even taking users and investors away from Google. Given the current global economic crisis and the trend the Google stock has taken in these last few days, such behaviour from investors could end up having a bad influence on the company as a whole.

In fact, while the temporary economic downturn that US and Europe are facing during these weeks didn't initially seem to affect Silicon Valley to the slightest, it would seem that the situation is now worsening and touching the IT industry as well, with Yahoo! stocks reaching a five-year low of $13 a share and many other

stocks in the information technology industry losing ground to various degrees waiting to finally bounce back.

Many analysts also agree that competition for the smart phone industry has been a tough matter particularly since the introduction of the iPhone, which according to many reports is likely going to reach Steve Jobs' original sales target of 10 million units by the end of the year. Needless to say, Apple's phone has brought many innovations to the market, with its main competitors, Google and its Android platform included, still relatively far behind.

But the others aren't certainly just busy watching: Google recently showed its commitment to push for a better mobile platform when it paid generous cash prizes to the winners of an Android application development contest, the first "Android Developer Challenge". Fifty teams of developers were awarded $25,000 each, ten teams receiving an additional $100,000 and another ten teams receiving another $275,000 as well, for a grand total of $10 million.

What is more, Google's application marketplace mainly differentiates from Apple's in that it doesn't ask developers for a percentage on the final sale price, which in turn should allow for cheaper applications for the end user, greater returns and interest from developers, and a better overall experience for both users and developers towards the development of an open mobile platform: according to Google and T-Mobile spokesmen, this is one of the factors that will play a key role in the end, eventually allowing Android to become one of the market leaders, and might have been among the reasons behind such high preorder figures for the G1.

But in the end, one could say that what Google is looking for with the entire Android project is to get people to use and search the Web more, irrespective of the platform used, given its uncontrasted dominance in the search engine business. If Android ends up prevailing on the iPhone, Google will become stronger than ever; but even if the market will decide for the iPhone, that wouldn't be a complete defeat for the Mountain View search giant: either way, we are moving towards global connectivity, better device integration and constantly intensifying use of the Internet in our everyday life, which in the end that is what matters to Google.