Schmidt to WSJ: There's $Billions in Android
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that perhaps Google has, in the past, been a bit of a one-trick pony because of its reliance on online ads for revenue.
But according to Schmidt, there may be some new revenue sources on the horizon: the mobile device market, thanks to Google's Android operating system.
Although Google bears all the cost of development for the open source system, its rapid adoption (the Android market is growing at the rate of 160,000 new Android-based smartphone activations per day) has created a market ripe for picking.
With "a billion people using Android," asked Schmidt, "you think we can't make money from that?"
No sir, we're quite sure you can make money from that. Among other possible ways to make a buck (or 10 billion of them)? A $10-per-year subscription service for access to newspapers.
Of course, to reach the magic $10 billion (well, pretty magical to us, anyway) mark you have to assume 100% user adoption of the subscription service, but we're guessing you get the point here: Google is not stuck for new ways to hoover billions of bucks out of billions of pockets.
Photo credit: Reuters
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