Stephanie Goodman

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Google announced on their blog  this week their plans to acquire the mobile phone and tablet brand Motorola Mobility for an estimated $12.5 billion dollars (£7.7 billion) in an attempt to progress into the mobile market and build up their patent portfolio.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, discussed how these latest developments would further enable Google to protect their Android brand from threatening competitors such as Apple and Microsoft. 

Since the 2007 launch of Android, Google have dramatically increased consumer choice and changed the way users experience mobile internet.  The most recent  Google blogpost also discussed the latest Android statistics, having found over 150 million people with active Android devices throughout 123 countries. 

Due to the success of Android, Larry Page concluded that he felt the acquisition of Motorola’s mobile business put them on an “upward trajectory (that was) poised for explosive growth” as they aimed to close the deal at the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012.

This strategic decision from Google coincides with the recent comments just days after the Chief Technical Engineer of IBM, who helped to build the first PC 30 years ago, expressed that he felt the PC is now dead and that the tablet is the tool of today.

Is mobile search the "garlic bread" of the future?

 
Back in the March 2011 Eric Schmidt, Google (‘s other) CEO, discussed at an IAB event how the average mobile search results equated for around 15% of all search volume across certain categories. 



As a result of this does this now mean that we will slowly begin to ditch our beloved (beloved, really? Ed.) PCs and replace them with the latest smart phone or tablet technology? 

Well, quite possibly, particularly taking into account the development of mobile (m) commerce and newly launched Facebook (f) commerce; it seems that it may be only a matter of time before users prefer the convenience of their mobile handsets over the bulky old PC in the corner.

However, there are still millions of people using standalone PCs for their internet needs, so it would be hasty to say that PC based browsing is going anywhere fast.

What does everyone think? Will mobile search become the norm any time soon?
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Discussion

Posted by adrian berry on Aug 17th, 2011
It's interesting to see that Google should put so much money into mobile search. The acquisition of Motorola shows a commitment to both mobile search and the hardware needed to effectively run it. It is a double edged sword however, many present Android smartphone manufacturers may see this as an attempt by Google to corner the market in hardware and software and to make Motorola the cutting edge for Android software and apps. It may even lead to a drop off in present manufacturers working with Android in favour of Windows or WebOS.

The growth in worldwide sales of PC's and particularly netbooks has slowed down to 4.2% in 2011 (half of what was predicted) and sales of the desktop pc in mature markets is pretty much dead. Sales of smartphones will rise to 1bn by 2015 so overall it's looking like very lean time for the old pc.
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