2009 is an Android year declares Google’s Schmidt

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | #Tags: 2009, Android, Google

IT WILL BE THE year of the paranoid Android, according to Google chief, Eric Schmidt.

On Google’s Q1 analyst call, Schmidt said it looked “like Android is going to have a very, very strong year” adding “the open source part of the strategy is working.”

Schmidt said Google had recently released an upgrade for Android software which was already floating its way around the tech community, noting “the stability, the proof points are really there now.”

Gurgle’s founder also hinted at big news to come, saying there would be announcements between now and the end of the year which would be “quite significant” and involve “hardware partners in the Android space”.

Schmidt reckoned the upcoming announcements would do much to fulfill Google’s vision for Android, a vision which seems to have been nothing more than vapour for almost a year already.

Nobody, it seems, can resist a netbook, and Google is no exception, with Schmidt gushing over how many people were actually porting Android over to their little lappies. This, said Schmidt was “another one of the great benefits of the open source model that we’ve used”.

So what does Google exactly hope to achieve from a free platform? There is certainly no licensing money in it for the search engine giant.

Well, according to Schmidt, the whole point is to get around 20 per cent of mobile subscribers interested in using the interwibble on their phones, where, ultimately they’ll have to perform Google searches and click on Google ads.

“We won’t be able to judge Google’s success there for a few years” Schmidt cautioned, but added “we’re still hopeful it won’t be a bust”.