Haier’s H7 Android handset: Cat. Pigeons. Bull. China shop.

There’s significant buzz about some sections of the mobile industry this morning. Haier’s coming to Europe. That’s what a lot of folk are whispering, some of them with a degree of excitement I haven’t seen since those ‘Apple i Fone’ rumours back in late 2006.

Haier is a big Chinese manufacturer, better known for household products such as refridgerators and other such commercial appliances.

They’re fahhhhhhhking massive. They’re the world’s second largest white goods manufacturer on the planet and the number one in China. Last year the pulled in a flippin’ large 17.5 billion dollars in revenue and they’ve got 60,000 employees, 10,000 of which are based outside of China.

So they’re big.

They’ve been in the common-or-garden mobile industry for a little while. They’ve been knocking out decent but unremarkable handsets — mobile telephones, nothing shocking, nothing amazing. You go to Haier if you’ve just setup a new MNO and you need a million handsets at $10 each.

Traditionally you wouldn’t normally see the likes of Noah from Phonedog revealing an exclusive unboxing of a Haier device.

That might be changing.

A long time ago I remember future gazing about Android. I remember telling folk that ‘once the Chinese get hold of Android, the market will get very, very interesting.’

Whilst we’ve seen some good offerings from HTC and the rest of the well known top tier manufacturers are looking to be bringing out some decent looking Android devices, what I really wanted to see was how the market would react to a 79 pound / $129 dollar Android handset. Something in that price bracket. Something that networks might give away free with a 12-month contract.

And something that — when you get right down to it — isn’t that much different from the $400-600 offerings from the top manufacturers.

Cnet’s Leonard Goh was at CommunicAsia for the announcement of the Haier H7 Android device. Here’s his post.

Slated to hit the market in September for around $150, the H7 looks pretty nifty:

Some preliminary specs —

– 2.8″ TFT touchscreen
– Mini USB
– WiFi / Bluetooth / FM radio
– 2.0MP camera (with an on-board flash!)
– GPRS (no 3G as yet)
– Android OS 1.5 (but will ship with 2.0 if it’s available)

Right then.

Now we’ve got a game.

Now we’re moving.

Remember where you were. The old guard — the Samsungs, the Nokias, the Sony Ericssons… now they’re going to have to work really, really hard.

When your average normob can pick up a ‘Google Phone’ for $150 without a contract, there’s going to be carnage.

Already the normob is reacting reasonably positively to the G1 ‘Google Phone’. The name recognition — the value, the safetly that the Google brand brings to your average normob cannot be underplayed. For normobs heading into their operator stores in the next 6 months looking to upgrade to the next big thing — you know, skip from their feature phone to something decent — they’re going to have quite a choice. And there’s not going to be that much different between the HTC’s latest model and the H7.

At what point will you be able to buy a Haier Android device for $49 plus $5 airtime?

Will the mobile operators in the West choose to play with the likes of Haier?

Or will Haier — and their eager competitors — begin to swap the developing marketplaces with cheap Android devices? How soon before your average Ethiopian is walking about with a second hand Haier H7? Will 3UK decide to continue pushing it’s challenger-brand-status even further and start offering it’s customers full-featured H7 Android phones? Complete with a few factory installed proprietary apps to deliver the usual 3 services (Skype/MSN/et al).

The dynamics of the global mobile marketplace have been highly predictable for the last 5-10 years.

I’m thoroughly, thoroughly excited to see what happens next.