Google's Android operating system is not material to the search engine, but Google makes millions of dollars from the advertising sold on Android smartphones sold all over the world. Android has become Apple's iPhone foil.
Google CFO Patrick Pichette said the Android operating
system is not material in answer to a financial analyst's question about how
the company sees its investment in the platform paying dividends.
"Android is not material to the company,"
Pichette said on the
second quarter earnings call July 16, noting that Google had no hand in the launch of some key Android
products, such as the creation of the
Motorola Droid X, which
went on sale from
Verizon Wireless July 15 and has
already sold out.
"[Android] is not a huge resource investment, but
it's a formidable return in that what you have is the entire ecosystem
exploding."
Asking how Google makes money from Android is fair.
Apple makes beaucoup bucks from selling millions of iPhones, with more than
three
million of the new iPhone 4 sold in the first three weeks.
Android is an open-source operating system and phone makers are
free to build phones with the OS for carriers to sell at whatever price point
they desire. And phone makers are doing this, with 160,000 Android devices
shipped daily.
Google makes money not directly from Android but in the
mobile ads it pairs with search on Android, iPhone and other smartphones on the
market.
While Apple CEO Steve Jobs
famously said people are doing
searches in smartphone applications instead of through smartphone Web browsers,
search grew 300 percent on Android phones through the first half of 2010, said
Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management for Google.
"What is the most popular app on these devices?"
was Rosenberg's rhetorical question on the call. "The most popular app
on these devices is a browser. What do they [users] do [with them]?
They search
an order of magnitude more than they have on any previous smartphones
in the
past. The combination of people browsing on these connected smartphones
and
searching is basically the formula on how Google succeeds."
Other new ad formats, such as
click-to-call ads, are also
boosting Google's bottom line.
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