SAN JOSE, Calif. — The death of Apple Inc. co-founder
Steve Jobs prompted Google Inc. to postpone a product announcement
planned with Samsung for next week, the Mountain View, Calif., search
giant confirmed Friday.
The event was reportedly
going to be the unveiling of the new Nexus smartphone, the first phone
expected to be equipped with the newest Android iteration, dubbed Ice
Cream Sandwich.
Though a Google spokeswoman would
not confirm that was the focus of the event, she did say that it was put
off out of respect for Jobs, the legendary Silicon Valley leader who
died Wednesday.
“Last night, a decision was made by both companies to postpone the event,” Shari Yoder Doherty told the San Jose Mercury News.
The
product announcement was scheduled to be held jointly with Samsung at
the CTIA Enterprise&Applications trade show in San Diego on Tuesday.
While Google declines to specifically state the product that was going
to be announced, Doherty did say that there were no issues with the
product that forced the postponement. A new date for the event was not
announced.
The newest version of Android is
expected to combine the smartphone and tablet versions — dubbed
Gingerbread and Honeycomb, respectively — into one operating system that
works on all Android-based mobile devices. Previous versions of Android
have debuted on Samsung’s Nexus line of phones, including the Nexus One
(Android 2.1) and Nexus S (Android 2.3).
Apple
announced Tuesday that its new mobile operating system, iOS 5, will
debut on Wednesday. That announcement was part of the Cupertino, Calif.,
company’s product launch of an upgraded iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S, and
was the first major product announcement helmed by new CEO Tim Cook, who
permanently took over the company when Jobs stepped down for health
reasons in August.
When Jobs died the next day at
age 56, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page both paid their
respects publicly on the Mountain View company’s new social network,
Google .
Jobs “was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance,” Page, Google’s CEO, wrote.
“My thoughts and Google’s are with his family and the whole Apple family.”
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©2011 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)
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