A colleague and I got into a heated debate last spring after hearing about the specs for the, at that time, upcoming iPhone 3GS. He exclaimed that the launch of this new phone would leave competitors so far behind in respect to technology that Apple would be catapulted into a market leader position.
I explained to him that this is a ridiculously myopic view of the market. Not only did/does Apple hold a tiny fraction of total market share but Android was about to make a splash.
He took to ridiculing the G1 and my thoughts about the issue in front of our colleagues… ‘the Google phone is for engineers and tech nerds and will never get the following that iPhone has’. I told him that within 12-24 months Android would have a greater share of the market than Apple. The ridicule continued.
He didn’t see the big picture. The Android strategy wasn’t about making an ‘iPhone killer’. It was about rapidly getting real estate on a lot of phones by giving away a solid platform and letting hardware manufacturers do what they do best – design hardware. And what does Google get out of all that? More mobile searches, which could be one of its biggest sources of growth in the coming years.
During Google’s third quarter earnings conference call today, one message came out loud and clear: Google’s mobile strategy is starting to pay off. “Android adoption is about to explode,” declared CEO Eric Schmidt, explaining that all the “necessary conditions” are set for growth: There are now 12 Android phones out there (most recently the Motorola Cliq) across 32 carriers in 26 countries.
It remains to be seen, but I think I was right.