Google finally launches its iPhone rival

05 Jan

Posted by Tom Andries as Tech and Gadgets

A new day, a new phone… After the unveiling of several Android phones in the past few weeks Google upped the ante with the announcement of the “Nexus One”. A Google smartphone made by Taiwanese tech firm HTC.

It finally is the war salvo directed straight at Apple, the gloves are off!

“Ironically Google might have a fighting chance by adopting the same strategy Microsoft succesfully used against Apple in the 80′s.
Pitching every ally they can find against the iPhone ecosystem.”

It’s the battle of the two tech giants we predicted in our September 2008 post: Is Google getting an Apple makeover?

The signs were there, first there was the launch of Google browser “Chrome” which recently outperformed Apple’s Safari in market share.
Making it a viable alternative on the pc also made it a viable smartphone solution to browse the web.

Then there was the announcement of the Android phone OS and Google’s iTunes alternative “Android Market”.

Takeover catfights
Google just as recently as last november announced it was buying the leading mobile ad network Admob for $750 million. The internet bellweather outbid Apple in a fierce fight for the company and now has the biggest iPhone advertising company in its portfolio. This gives Google a huge advantage.

Thanks to Admob, Google also secures the #1 spot in the mobile advertising space and knows exactly what it’s competitors users are doing and can learn from their behavior.

That’s only the beginning of the takeover catfight though. Just a few weeks later Apple snatches streaming media company “La La Media” for $85 million. A company that also Google had set its eyes on.

And Steve Jobs continued his buying spree by acquiring “Quattro Wireless” for $275 million. It’s the most meaningful direct competitor for… you guessed it!
Google’s new mobile ad darling “Admob”.

Hardware warfare
And the war is not over yet. Google and HTC have also combined forces to launch a range of Android powered netbooks and a tablet pc!

That’s right even before the iTablet or iSlate by Apple is released, the competition has turned on their fotocopiers!

The biggest loser…
The biggest loser in all of this? A company that totally missed the boat and had no viable mobile answer: Microsoft.

Google’s mobile focus can also be seen as a pre-emptive strike against the dark forces of Redmond. Microsoft failed to foresee the mobile move so miserably that they’re out of the game for now. Thanks to this, momentum totally is on Apple’s and Google’s side.

As irony will have it, Google might have a fighting chance because it is adopting the same strategy Bill Gates succesfully used against the Mac platform in the eighties: Pitching every ally they can find against the closed iPhone ecosystem. And that means more manufacturers, more carriers and more choice.

And strength in numbers might be the only way to go for now. It might bring prices down to a point where Apple just can’t match them anymore and Apple’s closed ecosystem will start to work against them.

That been said, in the near future Apple’s king of the smartphone world and nothing can match them. The Google Nexus One phone does not re-invent the wheel and Google can only hope to gobble up marketshare from Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm, Nokia & its own Android allies HTC and Motorola.

> Which company will prevail? Which smartphone would you buy? Grab your chance and share your opinion in our comment section below.

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks