14 DAY TRIAL // Android has been incredibly successful for Google, but it's also been a lot of headaches. It's partners keep getting sued over patents, it had to pay $12.5 billion, 9.08€ billion for Motorola to keep patent hoarders at bay, a deal that hasn't been completed yet, and even that is not guaranteed to work.
All the while, Google is giving Android away for free. In fact, Microsoft is making more, a lot more, from the phone makers using Android than Google is, since it managed to constrict many big players, HTC, Samsung, into paying a patent fee to use the free, open source operating system.
If you look at it this way, ut just doesn't seem worth it, but Google has never tried to make money from Android directly.
Instead, its strategy has always been to make Android as accessible as possible, to get more people using the mobile web, and make money from advertising Google serves them.
Surprising or not, it seems to be working, Google is now making a significant amount of money from its mobile units. In fact, Google is set to bring in $2.5 billion, 1.81€ billion, a year from its mobile business.
Google isn't saying exactly where that money is coming from, but most of it should be from mobile search ads. Google also serves Display ads and enables developers to include ads in their apps as well.
It's important to note though that the figure is not strictly related to Android, Google is also the default search engine on Apple devices, which are more than a few, so it should be making quite a lot of money from that as well.
Google doesn't regularly disclose mobile revenue, in fact, the last time it did it was one year ago when it said it was set to make $1 billion, 720€ million, from mobile for that year. Larry Page has now provided some update numbers and also some Android stats.
"The growth of Android is mindboggling too - over 190M devices have now been activated globally," he said.
"I’m super excited about the soon to be released new version of Android, called Ice Cream Sandwich. That’s right, Ice Cream Sandwich. You won’t believe what we managed to get done in this release," he added.
"We’re also seeing hugely positive revenue impact from mobile, which has grown 2.5X in the last 12 months to a run rate of over $2.5 billion," he also said.