Google Mobile Revenue
Posted in Articles on May 20 2011Horace Dediu (via Daring Fireball) presents some very interesting charts on mobile phone profit and revenue. Overall, the iPhone accounts for 5% of all phones (not just smartphones) and yet it accounts for 20% of the revenues, and a staggering 55% of the profit.
What I wonder though, is what these charts would look like if Google was included. As best as I can tell, Google makes about $1 billion in mobile search and ad revenue each year. Although Horace Dediu doesn't provide numbers for all of his charts, I would estimate that Google is starting to approach the same level of profit as some of the handset manufacturers (note that I'm talking about profit and not profitability). That might not sound impressive, but when you consider that this is just from mobile services and ad revenue, I think that Google is in a strong position.
However, when you consider the Google Android platform, I think Google is in an even stronger position (with respect to mobile revenues), as it gives them access to user data, and control over which services end users have access to. The Android platform is doing really well in terms of adoption, and, for better or worse, it seems to have become the Windows of the mobile platform.
Whatever you say about Apple, Google, and other players in this market, mobile computing is the future, and I think we're getting closer to a time when mobile computing will overtake desktop computing.
Published May 20 2011 - Permalink
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