London, Sept. 16: Google is expected to unveil its first mobile phone next week, sparking a fierce battle with Apple’s hugely successful iPhone ahead of the Christmas shopping season.

The handset, known as the Dream, will be made by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, and available exclusively on the T-Mobile network in the UK. It is expected to be available in stores as early as November. It is thought the device will be launched at a special news conference in New York next Tuesday.

The handset will run Google’s new mobile phone operating system, Android. It is thought the phone will have a slide-out Qwerty keyboard as well as built-in global-positioning technology, and will be capable of running Google’s range of Web applications such as its email service Gmail, productivity suite Google Docs and mapping service Google Maps. It is also likely to feature Google’s new Web browser, Chrome.

Google, which already dominates the online advertising and search industries, is looking for ways to replicate its success on mobile devices. By putting its own Web browser at the heart of the Android operating system, it has the potential to deliver its content and applications to a ready-made target audience.

“We want to create a whole new mobile experience for users who want the same applications on the phone as they use on the Internet,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, on the day the Android project was announced. HTC, the expected maker of the first “Google phone”, has built a solid reputation for the quality and inventiveness of its handsets. Earlier today, it unveiled three more touchscreen devices, all of which run the Windows Mobile operating system.