On Monday, The Wall Street Journal presented readers with some rather disappointing news about the Google Android open-source software-based phones.

Although it was announced they would be made available in the second half of 2008, everyone was expecting them to appear at the beginning of this time frame. Now however, according to the Monday report, it seems their launch date has been pushed back to the fourth quarter.

Handset makers are doing everything in their power to produce phones with Android support. According to the Journal, Sprint Nextel and China Mobile won’t be able to release Android-based phones until 2009.

Texas Instruments has already announced its own mobile phone prototype, based on the Android Open Source Platform. The new handset would also allow the integration of other applications, which is something new, considering that up to this point, this capability has been limited strictly to computers. The company said that different people would be able to use the mobile phone according to their specific needs.

In March, Rich Miner, Google’s group manager for mobile platforms, said that, in his opinion, Android-based mobile phones will outsell Apple’s famous and controversial iPhone. Miner made this surprising statement with the occasion of the Emerging Communications Conference at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.

Google’s already very popular Android system was introduced in November 2007 as a "complete open-source [software] stack" for mobile devices, “not just an operating system,” as Rich Miner added.

Being aware of the fact that developers represent the key instruments for such an initiative, Google decided to offer $10 million in prizes in its Android Developers Challenge for brand new and useful applications.