Google has Gone Mobile
Google has its sights set on the mobile industry, and perhaps it is the search engine giant that may finally bring order allowing mobile marketing to take off in the United States as it has in Asia and Europe.
Google, with potential eyes on launching the "GPhone", has been moving forward with the release of "Android", yet another mobile operating system to enter the mobile marketplace.
But Google might finally be able to clean up the clutter. To date, Symbian, Windows, Linux, Palm, and Nokia have all been actively used in the mobile arena as operating systems. Symbian, originally conceived as an alliance among cellphone makers to produce a standardized operating system, dominates the European marketplace but has failed to gain traction in the United States due mainly to the departure of key players in the alliance and strategic moves by other operating systems to carve out and defend market share.
Mobile carriers desperately want standardized systems. The more operating systems at play, the higher the development costs for third-party developers creating new features that power mobile growth. For example, if AT&T has a new feature and wants to leverage within its network, it must develop the feature for at least the Windows platform (such Blackjack phones), the iPhone, and Palm's operating system. Factor in coding the same program three times and then add the time and effort trying to standardize all three as much as possible, and you can see how costs are not just multiplied but exponential.
Cellphone makers, on the other hand, want to be the ones powering new feature development instead of the networks. It is a classic case of who is in control of the innovation cockpit. The firm at the helm not only can power developments to its specific goals and manage these within their core competency, but the cell phone maker then has dominant control of the profit growth.
So why does Google have the capability of breaking this deadlock?
Part of the answer lies in Google's natural business model of sharing revenue. First, the Mountain View, Calif. firm not only has a model that allows all parties to benefit, but it also has proven its execution abilities. Any time a shared-revenue agreement is first established there is the natural concern of fairness. Google's legacy helps diffuse this concern and provides the platform for a potential three-way sharing agreement between the search engine giant, the hardware maker, and the service firm.
Second, Google also has a monstrous client base as leverage. Google can instantly integrate its existing options into mobile expansion both quickly and efficiently. This allows for mobile advertising to explode while significantly reducing the growing pains typically faced by ventures growing at the rate anticipated.
A single operating system could allow for an exponential growth in consumer features and marketing opportunities. But that is where the fight is being fought hardest.
The Symbian alliance failed mostly due to the natural strategic decision to protect differentiation. The more standardized the actual phones, the closer they come to becoming commodities. This concern will not go away regardless of how great Google has been. Whether Google can simply buy out this concern with its revenue stream, or break hardware's will due to size and strength, remains to be seen. Still, cell phone makers are not the only ones wondering which side of the field Google is playing.
Given Google's play into the wireless spectrum space, everyone in the mobile industry is on their toes. Perhaps it is this level of centralized power that may finally bring sanity to the mobile marketplace.
