14 DAY TRIAL // Mountain View-based Internet giant Google has become one of the leading names in the mobile phone space through the launch of its Android operating system a couple of years ago. Undoubtedly, the platform is poised for growth, as more and more users choose it over competitive solutions such as BlackBerry or iPhone, and developers have also started to migrate towards it. Although the latest version of the OS, namely Android 2.2 Froyo, arrived on the market about the same time as Apple released the new iOS (iPhone OS 4), Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman and CEO, says the two are not related.
According to him, Google is focused on the building of a new business model for the mobile market, one completely different than Apple's. Although Android is seen as the main competitor against the iPhone, Google says that it does not plan on beating Apple. Indeed, the two models are radically different. The Android operating system is open source, and manufacturers can put it on top of any hardware configuration, while the apple model is different.
Of course, Google does not have only one mobile device running under the Android operating system, as Apple has. The company did offer mobile phone via its web store, but it was meant to help the platform take off, it seems. Indeed, the Nexus One by HTC was available via Google with a contract agreement with T-Mobile USA in the beginning, but the company expanded the available options soon after launch, adding AT&T in the mix. Canadian users were also able to purchase the device from Google, with contract options for various carriers in the country.
Here's what Schmidt had to say about Nexus One (via telegraph.co.uk): “The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did. It was so succesful, we didn't have to do a second one. We would view that as positive but people criticized us heavily for that. I called up the board and said: 'Ok, it worked. Congratulations - we're stopping'. We like that flexibility, we think that flexibility is characteristic of nimbleness at our scale.” Nexus One sales via Google's web store were halted a while ago, and the device arrived in Europe via Vodafone, a clear shift in Google's plans for its marketing.