Software – Google Dominates Mobile Search

Published on Feb 22 2011 // Apps

In competiton with Yahoo, Google grabbed a massive 61% of the searches done on mobile phones and Pocket PC’s in the first quarter of 2008. Yahoo came in at 18% and MSN at 5% (Nielsen).

Female Mobile Searchers
35% of searches made using Google are made by women according to Nielsen, making an average of 9 searches per month, more than Yahoo users who apparently do less than 7.

Mobile Search will be Huge
With 118 Million ‘smart mobile devices’ (Canalysis) sold in 2007, Mobile Search is the new frontier of the search industry and is already having a strong influence on how the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are writing their 5 year plans, understanding that potential profits for the winners are huge.

Google Android
Google are moving quicky to take a slice of this market. Android sponsored by Google is the new open platform for mobile devices including email, SMS, calendar, mapping, browser and contact database. Google is betting that their commitment to an open architecture will lure Java developers to build a rich set of applications around the open API platform.

Google wants 4G to be open
Verizon eventually won the bidding in the recent auction of the 700MHz spectrum, but not after a lot of sabre rattling from Google over Verizons’ plans for the network.

Google persuaded the FCC last year to make a condition of granting the licence that the network be open, allowing any device to connect, and to allow any application to be downloaded. Once Verizon had won the contract they disagreed, but big G. has asked the FCC to make sure that Verizon sticks to the rules.

Essential 4G is Open

Once you understand that the 700MHz frequencies allow clear broadband wireless data transfer through walls and other obstructions, its easy to see that Google will benefit from wide and open adoption of mobile devices attached to these networks, ultimately that will bring home the big prize; lucrative advertising revenues, and at todays count, 61% of them !