iPhone, GPhone–What About a B(oomTown)Phone?
by Kara Swisher
Posted on August 3, 2007 at 12:03 AM PT
Of course they’re doing a phone.
So let’s just all agree to suspend the will-they-or-won’t-they speculation over the much rumored GPhone from Google.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kevin Delaney and Amol Sharma wrote a nice wrap-up yesterday of the plans by the search giant to create a mobile handset.
And why not, especially since a lot of growth in advertising is expected to come from the mobile market in the future, as more robust phones arrive and are used for even more computing by the average user. Now mobile ads sales are in the paltry $1.5 billion range annually, but it’s predicted to be going to almost $15 billion only a few years from now.
The GPhones, however they are made and sold, would also presumably carry all the various Google applications (like search and mail) that have been popping up on other handsets, the most recent example being Google mapping services on Apple’s iPhone.
As Google CEO Eric Schmidt said as much in secret business code to Walt Mossberg in an interview he did in May at the D5 conference (the video of the entire interview is embedded below): “What’s interesting about the ads in the mobile phone is that they are twice as profitable or more than the non-mobile phone ads because they’re more personal.”
Translated: We’re jumping in with our big feet asap!
And Google’s recent activity in the upcoming wireless-spectrum license auction by the government should pretty much put to rest any other doubts, given it could eventually allow it to turn into a phone company.
And, oh yeah, they hired phone guru and Sidekick creator Andy Rubin a while back. And you don’t have to be a psychic to know he–wait for it–is working on a phone.
Because he is.
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
