Google has seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset, adding weight to the group’s confidence at being able to generate significant revenues from the mobile internet.
“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations…
If the trend continues and other handset manufacturers follow Apple’s lead in making web access easy, the number of mobile searches will overtake fixed internet searches “within the next several years”, Mr Gundotra said.
More searches mean increased revenues for Google, which makes its money from advertising attached to search results. Google has never separated out its mobile revenues but Mr Gundotra said the business was growing “above expectations”, both in terms of usage and revenues…
“The world is changing. Users want an internet without fences. They know how to type in Google.com if they want to get to it. Two years ago the operators were still playing the role of gate keepers but that is no longer the role for them,” Mr Gundotra said.
The silly buggers are the corporations who leave user interface, end-user, choices in the hands of people wholly divorced from the needs of consumers.
Who’s left in the wonderful world of handset design who doesn’t know that people want easy access to the Web?
while everybody else is fighting over how best to protect the business models of making mousetraps or just blindly buying into the industry, the rat race is being won by people who strictly focus on making better mousetraps.
Grog is right. I had a variety of phones from Sprint, Verizon and AT&T over the past few years and the internet was basically unusable. I picked up a refurb iPhone 8GB from Apple and I am using the internet and Google probably 50x more often than I ever did with the others… It is so very usable, not perfect, but very usable.
This is so accurate. If we could just get a phone (OpenMoko where are you?) that gave us the same direct Web access and did not give any money to Steve Jobs the world would be a happy place.
#3, Who cares who I give my money to. If Steve deserves it then go him. Hate the game, not the player.
If I could afford an iPhone or something comparable then I would use it. But for now I am stuck typing in dates and things through the number pad into my Nokia
Answer – The problem is lack of choice.
The iphone is great, but no productivity features.
Winmo has lots of features, poorly implemented.
I guess what I really want to know is “Wheres the Newton?”
A 3G iPhone with exchange support, doc support, and 3rd party apps would be killer.
Im still nervous about no keyboard. People seem to think the touch keys work well, so maybe its not all bad.
Here we are a year removed from the initial product announcement, and no one is yet in the iPhone’s league. These people simply don’t understand the market.
#5 – With all due respect, 3G is a non-factor. It has wifi, which is better than 3G. That argument is dead and gone.
tcc3 check out the nokia n810 its all that and more.With wimax coming looks like the telecoms are going the way of analog t.v. We don’t need no friggin cellphones.
@Billabong
I would buy the Nokia n810 if I could make cellular calls from it. Without cellular it is just a big PDA.
James Hill
Wifi is a valued feature and needs to be in this sort of device, but it cannot replace the regular data service altogether.
Wifi is great, as long as you’re near a wifi cloud.
I want a cellphone that makes phone calls, not one that browses. The browsing function is probably more useful as a GPS app than anything else.
#4 – Steve Jobs getting money is one of the most important reasons to NOT buy an Apple product.
Now, if they could amend the Constitution so all profits from Apple products go to Bill Gates, that would be another story altogether.
Bill’s a punk. He doesn’t deserve jack.
And so on that same token can we make it a law where all the money sold from Vista ( including the deals with the manufacturers so the computers come pre-loaded with Vista because lets face it NO ONE is buying it from the shelves ) Go to steve? Share and share alike you know…
Better yet, lets trade steve’s iPhone sales with Microsoft’s Zune sales. Oh wait there were no sales of the Zune ( I stand corrected. I know of one person who has a Zune. lost all his music Twice. )
Maybe this just means that people with iphones get lost more often. I think people are focusing on the wrong point here which is that people have no freaking clue where they are going when they leave the house. These people just need to plan better before walking out of the house, or just showing off to their friends…
How about a cell phone that doesn’t take pictures, doesn’t have web access, doesn’t dance the hokey pokey, but actually makes clear, consistent, intelligible voice calls!!!
Hello! Anyone listening?
Oh, and it should have a feature to automatically reject any text messages.
Until they get that part right, the rest is bushwah!
Companies Like Dixie and Solo have been making phones like that for years. Popular with the younger set. No infrastructure for them though (you ll need to string it yourself)
#12 – Steve’s lower than jack. Would it even be too much to ask that he wear a with with a collar once in a while. Goth idiot who thinks he’s too hip for the room.
… and the naysayers said it would never happen… heh, heh.
It is irrelevant that you or I wouldn’t buy one and/or use it for web access. What is relevant is that the iPhone is thriving (28% of the NA market, 7% of the world market), despite the huge mistake of Jobs presumptuous and limiting marketing ploys.
Tried an iPhone at AT&T once. I was unimpressed, as it has no clickable buttons, so dialing a phone number that’s not in the address book is annoying (my fingers skidded and misdialed). What would be better is something like a Blackberry or a PDA with keys and a large color display screen (at least as large as the screen on my Garmin color Legend GPS) to be used as a web display.
http://www.climatecounts.org/scorecardlist.php?c=13
Apple is the worst major Electronics company with respect to the environment. Bigger story than their next device.
Um Pedro, I wondered when you’d show up. it’s just no fun without you. 🙂
Apple made 3rd place in the US in in just 200 days. Nokia doesn’t even regester there after how long?
…and Apple hasn’t begun to introduce iPhone worldwide (just started in 3 countries) and they already have 7% world market. They are currently 5th in the world. Look out Nokia.
Face it Pedro, this is a winner like the iPod.
What really amazes me is most people don’t know how badly Apple messed up on the Powermac G5 line. That would have killed most computer makers, but they managed to skip through it without so much as a scratch. I would have started a class action against them if I had bought one. (liquid coolant leaked and fried 78% of liquid cooled models after 2 years, tons of uneven heating probs in the other multiple processor models). Apple is not only an innovator, it’s a survivor. Don’t let your hate-on for Apple skew you common sense.
Bad time to be looking at any stock anyway, Pedro. if the US goes into a real recession, everyone and everything will be royally sucked down a maelstrom. I’m dusting off my sailboard.