Google, the No. 1 search engine on the Internet, is currently among the biggest companies in the industry. Besides selling targeted ads and further developing its search engines, Google is now busy creating new platforms for advertising. According to Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, mobile phones are now crucial for the company’s further growth.

According to Mr. Schmidt, there are about 800 million personal computers installed in the world, whereas the number of mobile phones is around 3 billion. More importantly, the growth rate of mobile is higher compared to the market of PCs. Furthermore, smartphones – mobile phones equipped with high-performance browsers – are really getting popular nowadays and those devices pose great interest for Google.

“There's an estimate of about 600 million mobile phones that are data- and Internet-capable. And that is the group that we really care about because those are the ones that are able to run powerful browsers. […] Now there are many new kinds of devices with powerful browsers where you can have very high-quality ads, new applications, and, of course, the phone,” said Eric Schmidt in an interview with BusinessWeek web-site.

In order to further help both operators and mobile phone designers to make advanced smartphones, Google has developed Android operating system. Moreover, in order to push as many smartphones on the market as possible and ensure availability of advanced wireless Internet connectivity, Google even shares mobile ad revenues with telecommunication companies.

“We are [partnering] with our telecommunications partners. We actually share in the revenue for the ads that show up on the phones. So the advertiser pays us, and then we share it, literally, with the handset and mobile operator. And often we divide between both. And that seems to be the only way to really get money into that system. It's very, very important that the telecom operators have enough capital to continue the build-outs of the so-called 3G and 4G networks,” claims Mr. Schmidt.

Google will continue to develop Android and make it more and more advanced going forward. Mr. Schmidt said that this Fall the second generation of Android-based devices will emerge and that will once again demonstrate the importance of cell phones for the search giant. With added focus on smartphones going further, no surprise that Mr. Schmidt recently left the Apple’s board of directors.

“Android is many things. First, it's an operating system for a mobile phone. It's particularly powerful because of the way it was built. The software is free, you can extend it, you're not locked into any applications vendor or any network. What we like about Android is its perfect expression of openness. A next generation of [Android-based] phones will be coming out in the fall. They won't necessarily displace other [phones] because they're also doing well. But we will have a significant bet in mobile phones. So from our perspective it looks like Android is going to be a success,” said the head of Google.

Tags: Google, Android