Google executives answered questions during the company's April 16 earnings call that highlighted their thoughts on the expansion of Google Android onto mininotebooks, known popularly as "netbooks." While Google's earning report exceeded some analyst expectations, the search engine giant is facing modest declines in revenue as it wrestles with a global economy in recession.Google executives used the
companys April 16 earnings call as a chance to talk about the expansion of
Google Android, their open-source operating system for mobile devices, onto
mini-notebooks, known popularly as "netbooks."
News has
been flying for weeks about Google Androids possible expansion beyond the
smartphone world. A
variety of IT companies, ranging
from T-Mobile and Acer to Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have all been planning a
variety of applications for Android. Analysts are in general
agreement that Android will eventually demonstrate robust multiplatform
capability.
Android made its premiere in August 2008, and analysts predict that the operating system will
be running on 12 percent of global smartphone shipments by 2012. Netbooks, with
estimated shipments of 22 million units in 2009, represent another potential area
of strong growth for Android.
"Overall, it looks like Android is going to have a very, very strong year,"
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said during the
call. "We are already aware of many, many uses of Android, which as you know is
open source, where literally the devices we hear about near the announcements,
so the open source part of the strategy is working."
"On the netbook side, there are a number of people who have actually taken
Android and ported it over to netbook or netbook-similar devices," he added. "So
we think thats another one of the great benefits of the open source model that
we've used. We're excited that that investment is occurring."
Schmidt emphasized that the porting of Android onto netbooks is taking place
largely outside of Google. He also suggested that more announcements from new
hardware partners in the Android space would be forthcoming in 2009.
Google has also been tailoring some of its solutions to run more effectively on
Android, including an updated
version of Gmail with new technologies designed to make it run faster on the
Android Web browser.
Google's competitors likely wont concede netbook-OS market-share without a
fight, however. Microsoft
claims that 96 percent of netbooks currently run some version of Windows as
opposed to an open-source operating system. The Redmond
giant has also been testing a version of Windows 7, due later in 2009, for
netbook use.