(credit: TechFever Network)

The mobile business is being transformed by a new openness, says Rich Miner (pictured), group manager at Google.

But Miner was hush-hush about next week’s expected launch of Google’s Android-based cell phone during a keynote address at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco.

Phones running Google’s Android software are expected to be announced on Sept. 23 and to ship in October. Miner said only that Google would release the Android software to the open-source community once the phones are available.

He spent most of his keynote explaining that the past year has been a transformative one for the mobile phone business. Apple’s iPhone hit the market, Google described its Android and applications developers got new freedom to write applications for once closed cellular networks,

Wireless carriers are going to find “their business models are going to have to change,” he said. They will need to take advantage of advertising and plan to get more “micro-payments” from an expanding audience of users instead of charging high prices for things like text messaging, he said.

The transformation is similar to what happened on the Internet, Miner added.

By Mark Boslet, Editor at Large.