Google’s announcement last week regarding it’s Android platform and Open Handset Alliance will certainly help to accelerate the delivery of more open mobile devices and applications. Clearly however, this is only in the interests of Google owning as much as possible of the lucrative mobile applications/services  space, and they still have a lot of hoops to jump through before fulfilling the hype.

The obvious starting point for Google’s move into mobile is to develop its’ existing search engine, to deliver more powerful location-based search capabilities. To do this they need to know where users are at any given time and either work with Mobile Service Provider to get the information; or if you are Google; perhaps make sure that GPS is built into the end user device at the outset - Thereby bypassing the incumbents before leveraging the information into an application they already have, namely Google maps. 

With VOIP rapidly cannibalizing traditional voice revenues the obvious next step &/or replacement service is peer to peer video – And for Google, what better place to get started than by leveraging it’s ownership of Youtube.com and customizing this for mobile devices? 

Then of course there’s what really makes them their money - All that advertising revenue!  If they are successful with their foray into mobile, Google’s traditional revenues from plain old fixed searches, could be totally eclipsed by a combination of location-specific mobile searches, other location based services and web video advertising – All of which are the real icing on the cake and estimated to be worth $3.8 billion by 2011 – Up from just $135 million in 2007! 

With wireless access technology evolving rapidly and further de-regulation of the marketplace in the pipeline, alternative methods of access are proliferating and competition is getting fiercer and fiercer – In the face of this it’s easy to see that access method’s could become largely irrelevant to Google, because access usage will be driven to the lowest common denominator based on the uptake of the hottest new ‘open’ mobile device. 

So what does all of this mean for the traditional Mobile Service Providers?

Clearly they must keep a close watch on how Google’s progress and success is in bringing their open handsets to market but perhaps most importantly hedge their bets; by ensuring they have revenue sharing deals in place with Google and others like them as soon as possible! 

Peter