by Playfuls Staff |
19th March 2007
By now, most of you already know that rumors about a Google phone and its additional software have resurfaced. But why would Google need a phone anyway? [more]
Wall Street Journal reported in its online
article from two days ago that Google is developing new software tailored to run on mobile phones, a software platform for such devices, along with integrated applications for accessing Google's Internet services.
According to WSJ, a top Google executive in Europe confirmed the existence of a phone project this week. Spanish site Noticias.com reported that Google's chief for Spain and Portugal said her company has investigated developing a mobile phone.
So far, as expected, Google’s officials have declined to offer a confirmation about the Mountain View-branded phone.
"Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users world-wide," said Google spokeswoman Erin Fors in a statement, quoted by Reuters "however, we have nothing further to announce", she added.
The reasons for which I don’t believe Google will have their own phone are plenty. First of all, I’ve heard rumors in the past about the famous GDrive, which was supposed to solve the problem of online storage, and even about a Google operating system- they both failed to become reality. Right now, many sites offer free online storage space, which would make the GDrive obsolete. Concerning the Google OS, I really don’t know how that would help Google in anyway, since they have such a fruitful relationship with the open source community.
There have also been rumors in the past about a Google browser- a project which the Mountain View behemoth probably abandoned following its collaboration with Mozilla foundation. Google has been developing applications that only work with FireFox- like Google Browser Sync or Google Notepad- so the investment in a new browser would simply be a waste of time and money.
But the most important obstacle in creating a Google phone is… Google itself. The financial deals signed by the Web-search giant with important players on the IT market almost forbid the company to develop such gadget.
Google has an insider in Apple’s board of directors, namely its CEO, Eric Schmidt. As you already know, Apple announced in January that by June 2007 they’ll roll out the iPhone, the company’s one and only touch-screen cellphone. The demonstrations at Macworld were pretty impressive, enough to make other giants like Samsung or LG try their luck with similar devices (which thus became “iPhone killers”).
So, if Google- which has a market value of more than $155 billion and enough cash at its disposal to buy sites like Orkut, Blogger or YouTube- plans to unravel a phone and a suite of mobile-Web software (after all, Google made it to the top 3 U.S. technology companies because of the Internet), than what is left for the iPhone? Confronted with rivals from South Korean giants and with its Google-branded counterpart, will the iPhone meet the expectations? And, more important,
does Google even want to compete with Apple in the mobile domain?After all, when he joined Apple, Eric Schmidt said that “Apple is one of the companies in the world that I most admire. I'm really looking forward to working with Steve and Apple’s board to help with all of the amazing things Apple is doing.” So he said
help, not
compete…On the other hand, Google cannot allow itself an idle position in front of Internet’s newest and probably most enticing provocation: mobility. There are a whole lot more cellphone users in the world than there are PC users, which means two things: a huge market to reap profits from and the ubiquitous presence of the Web. Right in your pocket.
You take your cellphone with you everywhere, but nowadays you use it not only for talking, but for watching small movies or pictures, chatting, transferring small files and, yes, Web browsing. Moreover, you can connect your phone to your laptop and use its 3G capabilities to have higher speeds (especially with CDMA, UMTS, WCDMA or HSDPA connections). If we speak about mobility, we should also consider cars, with Microsoft’s partnership with Ford being the best example of how Bill Gates’ “connected experiences” concept comes to life.
According to a new
research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of machines connected to cellular networks in North America will reach 66 million by 2011. At the end of 2006 there were about 9 million active cellular and satellite wireless M2M connections in the US and Canada. Private vehicles constitute the largest vertical market segment in terms of units, followed by commercial vehicles, security alarms and POS-terminals.
Air transportation and railroad companies have also made important steps in implementing mobile Web solutions for their customers, which brings us again closer to the Internet-ecosystem concept.
Now imagine a world of Google being deployed through a revolutionary Google phone, which far exceeds even the hopes put in Apple’s iPhone. Imagine a combination of Palm Treo, Nokia Internet communicator and BlackBerry, with a focus on delivering Google’s Web-based services to the world. It could be an Internet-centered phone, unlike anything we’ve ever seen by now, probably using the Wi-Fi technology. Which could actually mean a
free phone.
In November 2006, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, told Reuters that he thinks in the future mobile phones should be free for the consumers. Not for everyone, but for those who will accept to watch targeted forms of advertising. Speaking with Reuters, Schmidt said that the mobile phones are used eight to 10 hours a day for talking, texting or Web access. "Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones.
Giants like Yahoo, Nokia, Verizon or Vodafone have already rolled out platforms for mobile advertisement. A study conducted by M:Metrics across five countries for which it measured mobile content consumption, found that monthly use of text message short codes in response to ads was as high as 29.1 percent of mobile subscribers. The firm found that a sizable percentage of mobile subscribers are responding to short codes placed in advertisements or in other media, with Spain topping the list at 29.1 percent, followed by the UK at 18.5 percent, France at 10.1 percent, the United States at 7 percent and Germany at 3.4 percent.
Google already offers some of its most important services for mobiles, including Google News and GMail (google.com/app), but it has not yet adapted its revenue-generator Google AdWords platform for cellphones.
Another reason for which Google should build its own phone is the mobile TV. The technology already exists but it is still expensive for most users. However, rumor has it that Google is already testing a revolutionary system of targeted TV-ads, which means that they’ll be buying bulk advertisement and they’ll sell it to targeted audiences afterwards. That also means that they might become the biggest client for the US TV market, which is estimated at around $54 billion. Having a
free, ad-driven Google phone that implements the aforementioned advertisement system in it doesn’t sound too far-fetched, does it?
Think also that Google owns YouTube and that Verizon in the US or Vodafone in Europe already provide their customers with videos uploaded on the popular video-sharing site. Google is still in search for a plausible and efficient method to turn its investment in YouTube in a profitable investment. By having a phone of their own, Google might just find the golden-egg laying chicken, since users might be able to upload videos made with their Gphone or download them, while watching a small ad.
However, there have been
speculations that Google might actually target the entry-level, not the high-end level of the phones market, which automatically removes the large screen and the camera from the potential Gphone. I personally cannot find any use for a Google phone in that case, since the telecom giants have already entrusted LG with the construction of a new, cheap 3G terminal that would leverage the consumption of the next-gen mobile technology, not only for 3G but for the upcoming 4G too.
