Google plans to foray its Android mobile software in India and China and creating wasys for developers to make more money from applications.
To attract programmers to its Android operating system, Google may offer tools that help them sell subscriptions, virtual goods and other items from within applications on mobile phones, Andy Rubin, vice president for engineering at Google, said during an interview.
Google plans to launch its android phones through Huawei and LG in parts of Asia and Europe.
The total mobile ad market will grow to $13.5 billion in 2013, from less than $1 billion last year, according to the research firm Gartner.
Google is taking steps for Android’s growth. Recently Google managed to drive up the number of users who activated Android devices to 160,000 a day in June, from 100,000 in May, the company said.
Gartner predicts that Android will pass Apple’s iOS system by 2012 to become the world’s second-most-popular mobile operating system behind Nokia’s Symbian.
Among the incentives for application developers, Mr. Rubin said, are making it easier to accept payments within the applications themselves or to sell subscriptions.
Most Android developers still make money from placing ads within their applications or from one-time fees. That makes it harder for them to earn as much as their Apple counterparts. Of the $4.4 billion that consumers will spend on application downloads this year, Apple’s App Store will receive at least 77 percent of the revenue, according to Futuresource Consulting in Dunstable, England. The Android Market application store will collect 9 percent.
MediaTek of Taiwan, which supplies chips for lowcost phones sold in Asia, Africa and South America has joined the Open Handset Alliance, the group that promotes Android, Google said.
Devices based on MediaTek may cost carriers as little as $70 each, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner.
Today, the least expensive Android phones cost carriers about $200, while low-cost Symbian devices run to about $170, she said.
In the first quarter, more than 41 percent of smartphones shipped worldwide were powered by Symbian. Almost 16 percent used Apple’s operating system and 10 percent ran Android, according to ABI Research, a consulting firm based in New York.
Bloomberg News
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