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Microsoft under threat as Android shipments top 60,000 a day
Google appears set to overtake Microsoft in the mobile operating system market, according to figures revealed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Google's chief claims that 60,000 handsets running the firm's Android operating system are shipped every day by phone makers including HTC and Motorola. If this rate is maintained, Google is on course to ship 22m phones this year.
Microsoft claimed it sold more than 20m phones in the 2008 financial year. However, its share of the market has dropped steadily since then and the overall growth of the smartphone market is not believed to have substantially boosted its sales figures over the last year. Research by Canalys shows that Microsoft shipped 14.6m smartphones in 2009, roughly twice the 7.8m Android phones that Google's partners shipped. However, Microsoft's share of the global smartphone market fell 26.4% in the year, while Google's marketshare jumped massively after only entering the market in Q4 2008.
NPD analyst Ross Rubin says that much of Android's success in the US is due to desirable features such as QWERTY keyboards and touchscreens, added to a comprehensive selection of apps and an excellent browser. In addition Rubin tells StrategyEye that the OS has gained the support of operators. "T-Mobile has been an enthusiastic supporter of Android, supporting the operating system on several handsets," says Rubin. "In the fourth quarter of 2009, Verizon's promotion of the Droid handsets [also] led to significant share gains."
Schmidt announced the shipping figure during his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In the speech he attempted to assuage the mobile industry's fears about Google's growing influence on the mobile market. Google's position as the go-to search engine on the net, both on PCs and mobiles, places it in a strong position compared to other players in the industry. The firm is also becoming increasingly involved in a range of mobile businesses with its new own-brand Nexus handset and the recent acquisition of leading mobile ad network, AdMob.
Mobile operators in particular are worried that Google's ever widening reach threatens to turn them into mere pipelines for mobile web services, excluding them from lucrative developments in mobile communications. Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao used his talk at MWC earlier in the week to warn that the dominance of search by the likes of Yahoo! and Google posed a significant threat to consumer choice.
However, Schmidt insists that Google is not trying to "ride rough shod" over the mobile industry and says that he wants to work with mobile firms. The CEO says that that the primary driver of growth in mobile is the expansion of services such as those developed by Google: "We need them [mobile operators] to go ahead and invest these enormous amounts of money at great risk and, in return, they need us to continue to build powerful new reasons to upgrade the connections and get a new phone."
