Will Google Dominate the Smartphone Industry Like It Did Search?
Google has become more and more integral to our daily technological experience due to the wide array of products and services it now offers. While Google currently remains unparalleled in its domination of the search engine market, it has been fighting an uphill battle in the mobile device industry against Apple and its ever successful iOS devices. The tides appear to be changing, however, and Google is increasing its size of the mobile phone market at an exponential rate.
The easiest way to see the growth that Google is currently experiencing in the smartphone sector is among the number of Android devices being sold. In the last quarter of 2011, Apple sold 37 million iPhones, averaging approximately 2.84 million per week during the busiest shopping season. During the same time period, Android shipped almost 46 million devices (500,000 per day) and the number of new cell phone registrations with Android is increasing at a rate of 4% per week, meaning that as of January 20, 2012, that number is now 700,000 registration activations per day.
Another advantage that Google has over Apple is its heavily-diversified control over web services. Naturally, Google services are optimized to work better on Android phones and the very nature of a “Google” phone – even though Google's apps are available on iOS – is very appealing to those who use Gmail, Google Maps, Google Earth, etc. The simplicity of Google has made it appealing, and much like Apple's penchant for simplicity and design, Google has its own cult, too. There is also incentive for existing cell phone manufacturers to adopt the operating system as it is free and open source, and manufacturers only have to pay Google when an Android device is sold, not when it is built. Another example of what users like about Android over iPhone is that it is more open in connecting with other platforms, such as editing Office documents on Android.
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