Google Phone

Thomas Husson | August 03, 2007, 09:39 AM

??

There have been rumors for the past few months that Google could launch a phone on its own. Speculation is a going a step further after this piece in the WSJ.

Sounds like there are lot of rumors on yet-to-be-announced mobile devices those days...

My 2c is that this story needs to be put in the following context:

- Google has launched so many products in the last few years and has such a huge R&D team that it definitely make sense they have worked on a prototype.

- Google officially expressed their potential interest to bid for spectrum in the 700MHZ in the US. If an operator or even if they have a wholesale network access there, it would make sense they have their own devices.

- At this stage, the main obejective for Google and for Yahoo is probably not to enter a competitive and concentrated market but to have their solutions and applications embedded in as many mobile phones as possible (see case study here on Yahoo's mobile strategy)

- If Apple and others come into the market, that' still a long term play before they significantly impact the market in volume terms (all the more if the potential Google Phone is launched, it will be launched in a year according to the WSJ). In the meantime, Nokia has sold 1.5M N95 devices and 9M N-Series phones (out of 100,800,000 phones worldwide) in Q2 2007 alone. So, the impact at this stage is essentially on the ecosystem / value chain. It just highlights the point to which boundaries are being blurred in the mobile space and that new entrants are and will come in.

- Mobile advertising revenues are almost non-existent today and will remain very very small in the next 2-3 years...

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