500,000 G1 phones expected to sell in quarter

T-Mobile USA is expected to sell in the fourth quarter between 400,000 and 500,000 of the recently announced G1 phones, which use Google's Android operating system, according to Taiwanese news site CENS.

T-Mobile will also order up to 2 million of the devices from G1 handset maker HTC, the site said, quoting industry insiders. This could mean a big boost in revenue for HTC in the fourth quarter and into next year.

T-Mobile will launch the G1 on October 22 in the United States for $179. The new phone, which has a touch screen and GPS navigation, along with a rich software interface, has been compared to Apple's iPhone.

Even at the predicted sale rate of 500,000 units in the fourth quarter, the Android phone won't be selling as quickly as the first-generation iPhone. Apple shipped about a million iPhones during the quarter in which it first released the smartphone, in the summer of 2007. Still, 500,000 phones is nothing to sneeze at. And if the pace continues, Android developers will certainly have a big enough market to target with their new applications.