Why Google Doesn’t Want The iPhone To Die
By Ed Oswald | Friday, April 15, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Us journalists and bloggers like to make a lot of the battle between Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, but it the search engine has a vested interest in seeing the platform succeed. Why? iPhones and iPads are simply sending the site a ton of traffic.
Says Asia-Pacific president Daniel Alegre to AdNews:
“Whenever iPhone succeeds, Google succeeds. I actually don’t look at it as iPhone versus Android. iPhone is a very strong driver of query growth for Google. We also monetise apps through the iPhone..we actually benefit from iPhone’s growth.”
Makes sense. In total the iOS ecosystem is getting increasingly larger, and if you group the iPad and iPhone together, is more than holding its own against the Android platform. Simply put, pissing off Apple is not in Google’s best interest no matter how much they’d like to see their mobile OS be #1.
Google has said previously that the iPhone has been a key driver of growth in its mobile search efforts. So it shouldn’t be surprising that at least publicly executives like Alegre are making such statements. Then again, if all those iPhone users pick up a Droid — the only other really dominant mobile platform — is Google really losing anyway?
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April 15th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
One thing that Google loves about the iPhone is that it is a great competitor and a great defense to any anti-trust concerns with sheer marketsize. And, of course Apple uses Google services too. Google wins when people use their services. If it happens to be on an Android device, that is just one more nice thing.
Google doesn’t make any money directly for Android, they make it indirectly. They do it with the iPhone too.
April 15th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
So, how much did Android & the iPhone help Google this past quarter?
Hint: the stock took a 47 point dive today. Wouldn't surprise me to see fall below $500 by June.
April 15th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
google reported 1st quarter (2011) revenues of $8.58 billion. apple's iphone revenue alone is almost 1.5 times that amount. for all the android hooplah out there, apple is the one laughing all the way to the bank. apple doesn't give a damn about market share. they will cede it at all costs to protect their revenues… as they should. btw apple's quarterly revenues are projected to be around $25 billion for the 1st quarter…. 3x as large as google's.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:00 am
It's ironic that you used Verizon's Droid trademark as a synonym for Android handsets. Verizon lately has been aggressive with replacing Google search wih Bing search on many of their Droid phones.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
No one cares what has-been search company Google thinks. Now the iPhone is on Verizon; is available on CDMA as well as GSM worldwide; and WILL be on T-Mobile as soon as ATT buys that company, Android, with ZERO inherent advantages, has no direction to go but down, down, down……..
April 16th, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Talk about a misleading and loaded comment, Ed. Are you suggesting iPhone is "dying" or in some kind of trouble?
Maybe if more tech pundits stopped paying focusing so much attention on taking market share numbers out of context, you would realize that the iPhone business is quite healthy and still growing about 100% per year.
That $8.58 billion Google reported last quarter? Google actually only did $6.54 in "real" revenue because $2.04 billion of that $8.58 billion was "Traffic Acquisition Costs."
So it seems a lot of people still have trouble getting their head around the fact that Apple sold 45 million iPhone in 2010 alone and is project to sell something like 80 million iPhone in 2011. That's blazing growth, not dying.
In fact, Apple's iPhone alone makes twice as much profit for Apple in a single quarter than the ENTIRETY of Google's business (which only produced a profit of $2.30 billion). Android may have market share, but it's clearly not showing up in the bottom line, as Google's profit growth has actually been decelerating over the past year!
And here Ed implies iPhone is in danger of "dying."
April 16th, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Just wanted to elaborate about Google's decelerating profit growth and how little Android is contributing to the bottom line.
Net Operating Incoming Growth (Year over Year)
Q1 2010: 38.0%
Q2 2010: 24.3%
Q3 2010: 31.7%
Q4 2010: 28.9%
Q1 2011: 17.3%
So despite all the tech punditry about how wonderful Android has been, Google is experiencing far less profit growth today a year ago even as Android usage has exploded.
Question: exactly how is Android contributing to Google's business because it clearly doesn't show up in net operating income.
Possible Answer: No wonder Google wants iPhone to succeed! Even Google can't make money on Android.
April 16th, 2011 at 10:33 pm
"Us journalists and bloggers"?
We.
Learn English.
April 17th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
True, the fact that even Apple's Safari browser has has a built in Big G's search in the navigation bar.
February 25th, 2012 at 1:01 am
Yeah… Just to be objective, iPhone owns because of the deeling sensation it gives to the user.
I <3 iPhones!