During Google’s third quarter earnings conference call today, one message came out loud and clear: Google’s mobile strategy is starting to pay off. “Android adoption is about to explode,” declared CEO Eric Schmidt, explaining that all the “necessary conditions” are set for growth: There are now 12 Android phones out there (most recently the Motorola Cliq) across 32 carriers in 26 countries.
The whole Android strategy, of course, is to offer an low-cost, fully-featured, open-source OS and hand that to the cell phone manufacturers so that they can concentrate more on designing desirable hardware. And what does Google get out of all that? More mobile searches, which could be one of its biggest sources of growth in the coming years.
Already, Google is teasing at what may be in store. During the call, Google executive mentioned at least three times that mobile searches on Google were up 30 percent from the second quarter. Of course, they wouldn’t say how many total mobile searches there were or what percentage of all searches they represent (probably still a very small subset), but they are very bullish about the company’s mobile prospects.
In response to a question about how material mobile searches are to Google, CFO Patrick Pichette replied:
Again, we don’t give the detail numbers. On a quarter over quarter basis, mobile searches grew 30% on Google. It tells you something about the mobile space, the smartphones, and how they are transformative. They are basically transforming how people live on a mobile basis. If we move forward the adoption of these mobile phones by lowering the cost because it is open source, think of how many searches [that will produce].
The way he put it, by making Android open source, Google is hoping to accelerate the adoption of Web-capable smartphones and get everyone searching on them. Given that most analysts expect more than 70 percent of mobile advertising to be search, you can see why Google’s CFO can’t wait to get as many search-friendly Android phones into consumers hands as possible.
Bullshit; Android Adoption as well as any os will not explode until it hits all types of phones from regular flip phones to smartphones which ever can cover all that will have the lead.
Don’t mention Windows Phone and the Iphone i’m talking about the entire masses which includes the rich to the poor plus people who want and do not want certain things on devices.
Pretty sure that’s what this says. No need to discuss the feces of cattle there buddy…
Palm’s CEO said it best when he said that there is room for more than 1 or 2 operating systems in the mobile space.
The Zune HD makes the idea of Windows 7 seem real interesting. Windows 6.5 not so much but I’m reserving judgement until then.
iPhone, and Blackberry are running wild, so WebOS, Android, and Windows Phone are fighting for #3.
your rebuttal..is bullshit.. all web capable smartphones sees an increase of viewing website data by 200% to 500%..
The history of the non smartphone i snow somewhat cast as in RIP 2012..
I agree. With data plans coming down, I see smart phones broadening out to the general public. It’s all in the price of the data plans. The only reason everyone does not have a smart phone is because they cost too much too own. As soon as that is a non issue, everyone will have one.
Until the plans with data are no more expensive than my current plan, I’ll happily stick to my basic phone.
Data plans coming down? Which carrier are you talking about?
When Google voice is available to the masses it will bring your minute/text message plan down to nothing so all you are really paying for is a data plan. It will just take some time for the average joe to figure out how to work it.
“When Google voice is available to the masses it will bring your minute/text message plan down to nothing so all you are really paying for is a data plan.”
Tell that to AT&T, whom I still shell out money for a minimum voice plan of 700 minutes. Yes. That is the minimum number that I am forced to buy if I want their service. There is no such thing as a phone with no voice plan, and I can guarantee that it will take an act of god for cell service providers to realize that a cheap “data only” plan might actually sell really well, especially when VoIP becomes more established.
You may want to pull your head out of the sand and realize that there is a big world out there. While data plans and technology are getting more affordable and accessible in many western and some eastern countries this is far from the case in the developing world.
Android is great. Will be interesting to see the quality vs iPhone ability wise.
It would be nice if Android was a mobile phone OS, but just a mobile OS. I’d love to see it on MP3 players and what not, since it would make for a great base OS for developers to create useful apps.
It’s coming. We’ve seen Android on all sorts of fun stuff.
ZiiEgg – Creative’s new PMP, runs Android OS in the background with their new Plaszma platform over top of it which is supposed to give it a very unique experience. Little is known about Plaszma right now, but Android is the base OS.
New netbooks – lots of new netbooks are currently running Android OS, as well as the future of Chrome OS (another google OS meant for small mobile devices)
Android is paving the way for a lot that other mobile phone OSs can’t do. The iPod Touch is just the iPhone OS with the CDMA software turned off. Android is much more than that, it was designed as an OS first, and a mobile OS second.
android will pick up steam rather quickly, one main reason is the number of handsets that will have the android OS in total 18 ( i hear) are set to be out by end of year. In addition, they are “open” whereas competitors aren’t.
Ill take an iPhone over an Android-running phone anyday.
I’ll take an open, free android phone over an iPhone run by a bunch of control-freaks any day.
Not to get into a fanboy war, but I agree whole heartedly. While the iPhone is a wonderful phone, the closed nature of it scares me away. I am more interested in a phone that acts like a computer, allowing me to install anything on it. Anyone with an open mind has to give Google credit for introducing this ‘openness’ to the three main US carriers. 3 years ago we all would have never thought this was possible with the way the mobile companies were designing there closed software and networks.
You nailed it, Alex. I want something as customizable as my computer but it has to be a flip phone. I wanna be Captain Kirk!
the only folks i see buying androids are engineers from the valley.
Then you haven’t been on a subway or bus in LA. G1s are actually pretty popular iPhone alternatives here. I have seen them in the hands of everything from aspiring actresses, to toy store owners, to caterers, to senior producers on giant websites.
C’mon, Lee. They’re not that common. I see them occasionally, but not very often. Meanwhile, it seems, just about everybody seems to be carrying an iPhone these days.
Sure, I see a lot of iPhones and BlackBerries, but to say that the only people buying Android phones are “engineers from the valley,” is a drastic understatement.
Ever noticed how when you own something yourself it seems as if you notice it everywhere?
based on what i’ve seen 2010 is Android’s year. it will, in fact, explode. unless they let it splinter uncontrollably.
(and i’ve seen one android phone that will blow people’s minds).
It’s not the Hero. I avoided buying the iPhone as much as I could. Got a Verizon MiFi router and use that with my iPod Touch for a month instead of Internet/phone device. Ultimately, I needed a phone so I took back MiFi and got the HTC Hero.
I really wanted it to work out, but two Hero’s broke in four days (headphone jack) and I realized after using iTouch how slow the Hero is cmparatively; it’s like running a Windows computer vs. running a Mac. I took my Hero back and succumbed to the iPhone; which is better because there is only one cook in the kitchen, Apple. With Andriod it’s like Windows Mobile too many cooks in the kitchen – none focus on matching Apple’s quality! Maybe Google will make and manufacturer their own Andriod phone in the future – i hope so!
i broke 2 in four days. other than that, i love it. just dont drop it!
My hero has a problem with the headphone jack too. Apparently there is a bug (couldn’t confirm if it was software or hardware) that prevents switching from speaker to headset automatically. You can get an app widget that will toggle it, however. Hopefully they’ll find a fix for the 1.6 update :/
No, it’s not the Hero. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that it’s an Android device with an ARM Cortex A8 (Snapdragon, for you codename-lovers)-based SoC.
I have a Hero. I love it. But it’s not mind-blowing, and it’s not the iPhone-killer we thought it might be.
It’s like, the iPhone-stunner. A Snapdragon device would kill.
Mike, Let it out. I know you want to.
Oh come on. Do tell more!
Snapdragon based handset?
Its the phone by Microsoft. They finally decided to throw away WinMo garbage and embraced Android…
Well, yeah, that would blow a few people’s minds. Starting with Ballmer.
Let’s see… theirs the HTC Dragon (rumored to launch in China) or maybe Motorola Droid (Verizon). Or some HD2 equivalent (predator?) or Acer Liquid… or….
It’s a total game trying to keep up with smart phone product launches right now. Fun, but frustrating. Especially when you are in the market for a new high-end smart phone and don’t know when/where to pull the trigger.
I’m sure that this holiday season will have a good selection of new phones revealed. And it’s about time Verizon gets some better phones!
What about all the people who have abandoned Android or who refuse to try it because of the poor hardware currently available?
I’ve had a MyTouch for about a month and I’m so frustrated with it that I’m going back to my BlackBerry Pearl until I can find something better. It’s great in theory but as far as I can tell it’s just not robust enough to handle the type of tasks I need a smart phone to deal with.
At this point it seems that Android is unable to overcome the limited functionality of a touchscreen that doesn’t seem to work with bigger fingers. Even with a “Better Keyboard” it can’t figure out things to suggest when it can’t figure out what key I’m trying to hit. After a month it should know when I’m spelling my name or email address like my BlackBerry does. No copy & paste feature in any part of Android means it’s utterly useless to gather a group of friends w/o some ridiculous app that chews up battery power and displays text so tiny.
Some of the apps are cool & I will miss them but they’re hardly worth the frustration I go through in just trying to read/send text and email.
And before anyone suggests the G1 because it has a keyboard all you have to do is look at it to realize it’s a cheap plastic toy and many of the reviews say it’s a complete joke. Maybe this illustrates Google’s position that handset makers can now concentrate on making the hardware better and they should – but the Android software I’ve experienced is so limiting in the way it navigates through basic smartphone functions that I can’t take it seriously unless it’s radically overhauled.
Couldn’t disagree with you more about the G1. It isn’t pretty but it is a perfectly functional smartphone capable of doing anything that my wife’s BB curve can do and more. I will agree with you about the keyboard. I always use the physical keyboard because the virtual one can be dowright frustrating. As far as copy and paste, I use this feature multiple times a day on my G1. Select your text and long click on it. Works like a dream.
I copy and paste with my MyTouch 3G all the time.
And the learning curve for the touchscreen keyboard took all of 48 hours with my fat fingers.
And ChompSMS works great for multiple texts to gather a group of my friends.
uh, android has copy and paste.
How? What do you press and how do you make the trackball highlight the text to copy?
The crowd sourced solutions I’ve found online so far seem more like work-arounds or things to do in spite of Android not because of it & I’ve yet to get any to work for me.
Get a superphone buddy, get an iphone !
Had one and ditched it coz I hate AT&T – my sister loves it but she’s been with AT&T so long she’s used to dropped calls and static…
I think Google is doing something great with Android, but where is the 3rd party UI support (Think SBSettings and qTwitter for the iPhone) and decent hardware?
At $200 I expect hardware to be at least on par with the iPhone and Pre.
Until that happens I’m shackled to the iPhone.
you guys should really try the windows mobile 6.5. On the HTC Imagio, it is quick and pretty flawless in my eyes.
uh, no thanks. Windows sucks donkey huevos
“it is quick and pretty flawless in my eyes.”
get your eyes tested
Just got a new Sprint HTC Hero running Android and its awesome!
Me too, Sprint + Android = bye bye iPhone after 3 years.
Sprint loaded it with some pretty good stuff too, like the navigation and TV apps. Thank you Sprint!
same. im very happy with my new sprint hero. only complaint is there isn’t an app that tethers to linux. might have to root.
I now of one very large industrial machinery maker who is planning on replacing Windows CE with Android in all the factories, thousands of machines.
Bazillion dollars saved in licensing overnight, payments to Microsoft no longer on the books.
Also,
Rumor has it several car makers plan to use android too *cough*BMW*cough*
industrial machinery, automobiles, digital picture frames, netbooks, televisions, on and on….oh yeah, phones too!
apple is still unbelievable but at least it now has some decent competition
Android is not going anywhere but down.
different form factors == mobile app disaster
I was also wondering today how they’d deal with that.
I think this point is overplayed. Yes there are added complexities to support multiple devices, but the added benifit is you have more customers to purchase your application. This nothing new to the software world. We support multiple browsers on the web and the web is hardly a disaster. The iPhone will face the same issues as hardware and software evolve.
(different form factors == added complexity) < increased market share
Right.
Is there something in particular about the Internet that makes people forget what happened just a few years ago?
Back in it’s day, PalmOS sold on tens of millions of devices with different form factors. Back in it’s day WinMo/PocketPC/Whatever sold tens of millions of devices with different form factors. Symbian is still selling on tens of millions of devices with different form factors. Just because RIM and Apple are having some success at the moment, releasing new versions of the same device over and over again, doesn’t mean the entire history and future of the smartphone/PDA industry is same form factor = success.
I know this is hard for iPhone fans to understand, but a decent programmer really isn’t that stressed out working with more than one hardware configuration.
Exactly. There are always growing pains when the first major upgrade to a platform comes out — remember when PCs had a ‘Turbo’ switch so you could run games designed for slower machines?
Bugs will be exposed, apps will be updated, and the Android world will *not* come to an end. Much as the iPhanboys would like it to.
Does anybody have the link for the 16 phones supported across 32 carriers in 26 countries? Thanks!
I think Phandroid is attempting to maintain a current list of Android phones.
http://phandroi...ones/#available
Check out all three tabs: Available, Upcoming, Rumored.
They all looks so similar… is that a limitation of Android or a lack of imagination and innovation by the designers?
Well, alot of the handsets are rebranded versions of the same thing, ie: the G2 Touch is a Hero etc… but really, how many times can one reinvent the wheel? What should it look like…bananaphone?
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Any feedback is highly appreciated
I know that Wave’s HTML5 UI works on the iPhone & Android, but I would like to see Android become a showcase for ALL of the new open web technologies (HTML5 Audio/Video/Canvas, SVG, WebGL, O3D, …). This would give web developers great tools to work with AND help to reduce/eliminate the need for CPU & battery hungry Flash & Silverlight on mobile devices.
There are TONS of HTML5 sites & demos popping up on the web. Here are a couple of links, for anyone interested (Google “HTML5 demos”, to find more):
http://html5gallery.com/
http://www.canvasdemos.com/
http://tinyvid.tv/
There’s also a video that shows how to modify your website, to use HTML5 to stream video to the iPhone:
http://www.yout...h?v=Ib0Dc5fnlus
@Schmidt:
How can Android explode?
The market is in the hands of Nokia, Samsung and LG: totaling 65%
It is unlikely that Nokia will use Android.
Samsung and LG will do a test product.
Only if Samsung and/or LG will use Android in mass market phones, then Android adoption will explode.
Don’t start believing your own fairytale.
Did you listen to the horrendous results in the Nokia conference call Thursday? You’re right, they’re currently dominant WW, but they’re bleeding badly. That’s no fairy tale. Google has succeeded in getting both Verizon and Motorola to take up Android strategically and tactically. Those partnerships will go a long way toward making Android a significant player in 2010, when Motorola’s Jha promises “tens” of new Android devices.
Well you clearly didn’t listen to the call. Nokia’s handset division made a profit of 780 million euros and have kept the market share @ 38 %.
Nokia made a loss of approx. 834 million $. Not sure if Samsung already did launch an android phone but be rest assured that both of them are working on one.
Samsung Android phone (Moment) will be out this month on the Sprint network. (With a slide out keyboard.)
Nope, the handset division made a profit of 780 million. Don’t people read anything except headlines anymore?
“Android Adoption is About To Explode”
Android adoption will never be able to compete against the PR of adopting a child from an African country. Until we see Madonna or Angelina Jolie with baby robot in their arms, paint us skeptical.
I’m pulling for Android while I stick with my Jailbroken iPhone. If HTC would release the HD2 with Android, it would crush the competition with that 1Ghz processor. I would probably make the jump then. What concerns me most about Android is that Google seems to be pulling back on openness just to get carrier customers. Recent articles point to developers being able to “allow” apps on certain networks. If developers can pick & choose which networks their apps can run on, I’m sure there is a “kill switch” that the carriers can use. I know T-mobile doesn’t allow certain apps to be loaded through Android Market. I cringe at the thought of how Verizon will limit apps on their network – esp those that hit their network hard with data usage and threaten their ability to sell their gps service, etc. Verizon has already said they will block other app markets from being loaded on their handsets so it directs users to their Verizon App Market. Of course this isn’t an issue for power users as Android apps can be side loaded elsewhere, but for the normal “non techie” user who just wants to pick up their phone, open the app market, and load some cool apps; this will severely limit the apps they can load…and ultimately hurt developer’s sales. I hope I’m wrong about Verizon, but given their history, I’m taking the “show me and I’ll believe it” route. Talk just doesn’t do it.
Been waiting for a decent open smartphone to come out before i replace my old trusty old Nokia ‘dumb’ phone. Maybe this year, nice!
“My bullshit detector is about to explode”
The biggest blunder by Sprint is following in Apple/AT&T footsteps with their bundled plans.
So whether you use it or not the cheapest calling plan is $70. They should have just made it so you could pick your calling plan of choice/need and add a data plan to it.
Also, the no tethering is a HUGE mistake.
What sprint needs is the ability to differentiate themselves. Instead they are sheep following the Apple/AT&T herd.
When will someone put the customers needs first and let that drive their profits????
Guys, does PdaNet not work on the HTC hero to tether it? It works perfectly on the G1.
Also Proxoid … Wired ‘tether’ like PDANet, works fine for me (G1/Dream). I don’t see why the wireless tether option is essential for people right now, but it will come.
Google is getting cocky… but again, marketing hype.
Both RIM and Apple have enjoyed success at least in part due to the fact that they control both the OS AND the hardware. Thus, the success of Android will constrained by the extent to which handset manufacturers embrace it. If recent history is any indication, the future looks bright but that could change at any point.