Today, the word “Google” seems to be a part of even the most technologically-limited daily vocabularies. Consumers have trusted Google with a vast majority of their Internet needs for more than a decade, and when talk of a new Google phone began to circulate in 2007, fans and critics alike were eagerly anticipating a game changer. Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile would be the first to carry the new Google Phones which would be produced by HTC and Samsung and according to the numbers, it did not disappoint.
To shed some light on the history of the Google phone, the company initially chose to steer clear of entering the hardware industry and decided rather to stick with their strengths by focusing on software. The Google phone’s mobile operating system, known now universally to us as Android, was immediately embraced due mainly to its open source platform. This means that rather than being carried exclusively by a certain phone, Android could be adopted by many different handsets from many different manufacturers. Developers also have the ability to access and modify Android’s source codes, essentially tweaking and customizing the software as they see fit. This feature encourages the continuous evolution of the Google phone, and keeps the Android operating system at the top of the charts.
At the Google I/O 2012 Event this past June, Hugo Berra spoke about Android’s growth over the past two years. He openly boasted that thus far, Android had already reached 400 million activations, with steady progress expected to continue. In fact, in September 2012, just five years after its birth, Android’s global market share was recorded at 68.1 percent without any foreseeable deterioration in the future. At a press event for Motorola that same month, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said that there were 1.3 million new Android activations every day and a total of 480 million Android users worldwide. Google was expected to pull off something of this magnitude, but the raw numbers are still somewhat mind-boggling.
Although there isn’t much detailed information on Android’s revenue, some details from their patent dispute revealed that the Google phone has already more than doubled its projections for 2013. Maybe their estimates were a bit low. In response to recent speculation about these numbers, Google was quoted saying, “The discussions in the documents date from 2010 or earlier, so don't represent current thinking about our business operations. Our industry continues to evolve incredibly fast and so do our aspirations for our various products and services.”
Of course there will always be steady competition in this industry, particularly thanks to Apple’s release of its new operating system, iOS6, and also with Windows Phone 7 and 8 not far behind.
There is no denying that Google has maintained a strong hold on worldwide technological developments to date, and it will be interesting to see reports of Google phone’s numbers come 2013 and beyond.
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