SEARCH giant Google’s plans to launch new mobile handsets equipped with a new open source operating system will not be ready until next year, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Google announced with great fanfare – and 30 industry partners – last November that it would have new phones on the market in the second half of 2008.

The company, which predicted Android would change the mobile industry forever, is finding the mobile market more difficult to change than it originally thought.

The WSJ is saying that the limited quantity handsets would not be ready until the fourth quarter, and that many of its carrier partners – and software developers working on applications for the Android platform – were struggling to meet the schedule.

The largest wireless telecommunications carrier in the world, China Mobile with 400 million subscribers, had hoped to have Android handsets to market this year but could now be looking at early 2009.

The US-unit of German giant T-Mobile expects to have Android product in the market in the fourth quarter, but WSJ sources say that Google is spending so much time on the T-Mo0bile effort that it is unlikely that other mobile companies will get product to market by the end of the year.

The Android platform, meanwhile, has not yet win the support of mobile software developers – companies that make everything from geographic information software to games.

The Android platform is also struggling to create the same kind of hype normally associated with a Google offering as the phenomenally successful Apple iPhone sucks the oxygen out of the market.