Eric Schmidt: Google Pushing LTE, Mobile Money & Cheap Smartphones In 2011
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has taken to the Harvard Business Review to talk about the search giant's strategic initiatives in 2011, all of which are centered on mobile. Schmidt highlights three areas of focus – LTE, mobile money and inexpensive smartphones – which will require attention if Google's plans to deliver personalized information about where you are and what you could do there right now are to come to fruition.
"To realize that vision, Google needs to do some serious spadework on three fronts," he suggests, kicking off with LTE speeds for mobile devices. "8-to-10- megabit networks, roughly 10 times what we have today ... will usher in new and creative applications, mostly entertainment and social, for these phone platforms."
As for mobile money, we've already seen Google pushing for its adoption with NFC support in Android 2.3 Gingerbread and in the Nexus S; Schmidt wraps that in some talk of developing nations, similar to what we've heard Nokia discuss. "Phones, as we know, are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world" the Google CEO explains, "and modern technology means that their use as financial tools can go much further than that."
Those new developing markets are potential customers for bargain Android devices, Schmidt seems to think. "We envision literally a billion people getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years" he suggests, "can you imagine how this will change their awareness of local and global information and their notion of education? And that will be just the start."
[via Near Field Communications World]