MUMBAI: LG Electronics (LG) and Google have announced a global collaboration to pre-install Google‘s services on millions of LG mobile phones.

Mobile users around the world will now be able to easily search for information, find locations, update blogs and manage email while on the move.

LG Mobile Communications VP product planning team Paul Bae says, "Building on our efforts to set new standards for wireless handsets, we are excited to partner with Google to offer extra value to consumers with enhanced mobile Internet experiences.

"LG‘s mobile devices, combined with Google, will provide consumers with easy access to their favorite Internet services even without a PC and make it easy for them to stay connected while in motion."

Select LG handsets, pre-installed with Google products and services will be shipped globally including North America, Europe and Asia starting in the second quarter of 2007. These handsets will create a more dynamic user experience, including one click access to Google search through an icon in the application menu.

More features of LG-Google handsets include:

- Google Maps for mobile. This is an application that enables users to view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, and get driving directions

- Gmail for mobile. This is a Java-based application that brings more speed, convenience and functionality to the mobile Gmail experience

- Blogger Mobile is an application to upload/download images and text to blog from mobile devices (www.blogger.com), keeps avid bloggers upwardly mobile.

Google director product management Deep Nishar says, "We are pleased to work with LG to make it easier than ever for mobile internet users to have powerful applications and personalised information at their fingertips."

"Users around the world now have more options for accessing information while on-the-go through search and Gmail. With applications like Blogger, users are now free to express themselves from wherever they are in the world."

Through this new partnership, LG and Google will jointly market LG-Google handsets, then further extending their collaboration to develop digitalized home in the future. LG plans to launch mobile handsets pre-installed with Google and products and service for the next few years with at least ten new handsets in 2007.