Google CEO: Mobile is winning over computers
Eric Schmidt gives keynote at Guardian Activate conference
By Carrie-Ann Skinner | PC Advisor | Published: 09:56, 06 July 2010
Developers are focusing on creating apps for mobile devices over computers, says Google's chief executive.
At the Guardian's Activate conference in London last week, Eric Schmidt said: "Mobile is winning... It's amazing to me that the smartest developers now are writing apps for mobile before they write for Windows or Apple Mac desktop operating systems".
Schmidt said mobile web use if growing eight times faster than internet access from a PC. Although, he did acknowledge mobile devices are backed up by "a million computers".
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However, despite Schmidt's comments on the power of mobile, Google won't be launching a new version of its smartphone, the Google Nexus One, that was unveiled at the beginning of the year.
"The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did. It was so successful, we didn't have to do a second one," he told the Telegraph.
"We would view that as positive but people criticised us heavily for that."
He also said the net was "by far the most disruptive technology that we've seen I history, even more disruptive than electricity".
"The fundamental reason for that is it has replaced the economics of scarcity with the economics of abundance," he said in reference to the fact The Times and the Sunday Times have started charging web users to access content.
"As the internet rolls through industries and rolls through user behaviour ... any business that's built on a scarcity of information model is completely upended."
Just like Google's UK CEO, Matt Brittin, Schmidt wouldn't comment on rumours the search engine is planning to have another stab at launching a social networking site designed to rival Facebook.
"That would be a product announcement and I won't say."
