The mobile phone industry is bracing itself for yet another assault from an outsider, the Google gPhone, according to BusinessWeek on Thursday.

The industry is still coming to grips with the Apple iPhone, and now daily speculation about Google’s unannounced gPhone has stirred questions about how the industry will cope with these new, disruptive devices.

According to unnamed sources, BW was told that Google is preparing a new mobile platform with an OS of Google’s design intended to break the domination of the Symbian OS and others now in the mobile phone market and set the industry on a new path.

The platform is seen as a way to exploit Google’s current offerings. Not all mobile phones support all the services that Google offers. That’s likely due to the fact that Google has developed an adversarial relationship with AT&T and Verizon based on some recent initiatives that undercut those carriers traditional business model. In support of the stirrings, it has been discovered that Google has posted 67 openings on its Website for mobile-related positions.

The gPhone isn’t expected to generate the same passion amongst customers as the iPhone, however, its agenda is apparently much more far reaching. "They want the carriers to open up," said Shawn Freeman, chief technology officer at Handango, a provider of mobile content and applications. "This is another way to drive the market in the direction they want to go."

Google has its work cut out for it. It took ten years and US$750M investment for Symbian to get where it is.