Why a Google-world gives me comfort...

"Having heard the strategy for Android based phones first hand, I can tell you why this is a very flawed perspective. The telecom analyst, Jack Gold's perspective comes close to the company philosophy. As they did with many of their web products, this is just a beta launch. You should see some great products coming out close '10 Christmas shopping season. "

Cost is about the carrier

Industry analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates agreed that potential customers would do well to think about the long-term costs before snapping up the latest and greatest mobile device.

"What customers and users need to be thinking about is that the service plan cost is all about the carrier, not the device," Gold said

Google's revenue model is not the same as that of Apple. The models are poles apart.

Apple extorts 30% or more of your monthly bill's value from the carrier - it's a fixed sum mostly and may also feature an ADDITIONAL variable revenue stream. You never get to see that even though you've paid a massive premium for the phone. Lock-in periods ensure that they recover the cost of the phone entirely and then some more. What the networks hate even more is that while Apple uses the phones which the networks bleed over for selling content over the itunes platform they never get to see that revenue. All they get is the passthrough cost of using the network bandwidth - which is a commodity now - and may soon be free. And given that most iphones are wifi ready and with wifi being ubiquitous even their bandwidth usage seems to be dropping. So for a network, selling iphones is increasingly a not-so-necessary evil. Every network is rooting for an iphone killer - which is a matter of time.

Now for google's model. Google has made it's millions riding the ad-funded content route. They make advertisers pay top-dollar to reach google customers. Google ostensibly reaches many many more people than apple's products do - including those who use apple's products. For google every new venture is an experiment towards perfecting their $30+billion ad-revenue model. They have no interest whatsoever in making money from hardware. And hardware too is becoming a commodity - any detractors might just want to observe the number of and sophistication (which is a term that conjures up different meanings for each person) of the smaller brands in the market. Yes, it's important for google to get a wider footing in the mobile market with a GREAT device which, like Sachin rightly pointed out, is probably a few months away. The Droid's mew avataar is expected anytime soon. As is a slew of WinMo7 phones. Rumours have it that Sony is about to cave in to the Android OS. LG's on the bandwagon, Samsung is joining in. Nokia will cave in eventually when Symbian crumbles. (3% of the mobile phones - smartphones; sold globally account for 35% of the profit. These figures are expected to read 10% and 55% in 2012. Nokia has close to zero% share of that market). Google is testing the market with phone after phone - all using the Android platform, which arguably, is FAR superior to the iphone's OS. And google may one day give a ad-supported ad-sponsored phone away for free (or almost), while agreeing to share the spoils of the ad-revenue with the operator and the device manufacturer. It's a thought, nothing's impossible.

Content, is another ball-game altogether. Admittedly google is struggling to aggregate content which users would like to pay for. Apps, for one, music and e-commerce applications come next. The rest are small-potatoes. Apple still leads the pack because of the itunes store. However we all know that with content being platform agnostic, people are finding alternate routes to sate their hunger for content. Google's now beginning to sell movies, music and serial episodes on YouTube - this began a few weeks ago. YouTube has more visitors than itunes will ever have. Major label and studio owners are quite keen on harnessing the strength of YouTube and one would want to watch that space keenly. What's more, Google is working with TV manufacturers and processor manufacturers to sell TV sets that're always-on, cloud computing devices. Winter 2010 may see the first such TV's hit the shelves. Then google has a shot at the global TV ad market!

As for developer delight - well Apple makes you jump hoops before agreeing to have your app featured on itunes. I guess Sandeep would be able to shed more light on this bit.

I'd still bet on a Google-world. The cloud is real and they're the cloud - or most of it, at least :-)

Now all I hope is that they don't play "net-neutrality surrender-monkey" and disappoint us all. Google, please don't do that, we wouldn't want to love you any less.

Cheers!