You might recall that I had a story on a rumor that Google wanted to become a mobile carrier. Today those rumors were confirmed at Mobile World Congress. Here’s what PC World had to say:
Google has confirmed for the first time that it plans to offer connectivity directly to mobile users in the U.S., but a senior executive downplayed the competition it would be to major U.S. cellular carriers.
Several reports have said the company is preparing a service that would be offered across an existing cellular network under a Google brand — a so-called “mobile virtual network operator” or MVNO. But the reports hadn’t been confirmed until Sundar Pichai, the company’s senior vice president, spoke at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.
“You’ll see us announce it in the coming months,” said Pichai.
However, before you jump for joy, it’s going be an MNVO as stated above. That means that they’ll be leveraging existing carrier infrastructure to deliver services. And what services will those be? Here’s the answer:
Pichai said it won’t be a full-service mobile network in competition with existing carriers.
Instead, he said, it will give Google a platform through which it can experiment with new services for Android smartphones.
He likened it to the work Google does today in hardware, where it works with existing partners on its Nexus line of devices. The phones give Google experience in hardware and a platform to try out various services, but are not meant to be a major challenge to companies like Samsung and HTC.
“We’ve always tried to push the boundary of what’s next in hardware and software, and we do that with the Nexus devices today,” he said. “We want to be able to experiment along those lines.”
Pichai said that he hopes cellular carriers will pick up some of the ideas and innovations it tries should they prove successful with users.
So. The net result is that Google is going to be in the mobile phone business without actually being in the mobile phone business. It’s an interesting approach and may yield some useful info for Google, But it may not lower your phone bill. At least not yet. We’ll have to see when Google actually announces this later this year.
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This entry was posted on March 2, 2015 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Google To Become Mobile Carrier In The US…. Sort Of
You might recall that I had a story on a rumor that Google wanted to become a mobile carrier. Today those rumors were confirmed at Mobile World Congress. Here’s what PC World had to say:
Google has confirmed for the first time that it plans to offer connectivity directly to mobile users in the U.S., but a senior executive downplayed the competition it would be to major U.S. cellular carriers.
Several reports have said the company is preparing a service that would be offered across an existing cellular network under a Google brand — a so-called “mobile virtual network operator” or MVNO. But the reports hadn’t been confirmed until Sundar Pichai, the company’s senior vice president, spoke at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.
“You’ll see us announce it in the coming months,” said Pichai.
However, before you jump for joy, it’s going be an MNVO as stated above. That means that they’ll be leveraging existing carrier infrastructure to deliver services. And what services will those be? Here’s the answer:
Pichai said it won’t be a full-service mobile network in competition with existing carriers.
Instead, he said, it will give Google a platform through which it can experiment with new services for Android smartphones.
He likened it to the work Google does today in hardware, where it works with existing partners on its Nexus line of devices. The phones give Google experience in hardware and a platform to try out various services, but are not meant to be a major challenge to companies like Samsung and HTC.
“We’ve always tried to push the boundary of what’s next in hardware and software, and we do that with the Nexus devices today,” he said. “We want to be able to experiment along those lines.”
Pichai said that he hopes cellular carriers will pick up some of the ideas and innovations it tries should they prove successful with users.
So. The net result is that Google is going to be in the mobile phone business without actually being in the mobile phone business. It’s an interesting approach and may yield some useful info for Google, But it may not lower your phone bill. At least not yet. We’ll have to see when Google actually announces this later this year.
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This entry was posted on March 2, 2015 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.