The Wall Street Journal says LG Electronics turned down a deal to produce the world’s first Android phone back in 2007.

The U.S. daily on Wednesday quoted a source that is familiar with the deal as saying that Andy Rubin, who is currently Google’s Senior Vice President of Mobile, faced a setback in mid-2007 when LG Electronics backed out of a deal to build the first Android phone. The source said Rubin then turned to Taiwan’s HTC Corporation, which had built a phone for Microsoft.

HTC went on to introduce the world’s first Android phone, the G1, to poor reviews. Meanwhile, hardware makers and carriers were impressed with Android, which then witnessed sharp growth after boosting cooperation with Google.

However, according to some South Korean media, Samsung rejected in 2004 an offer for cooperation by a venture firm that developed the Android operating system.