At least 65,000 mobile phones powered by Google’s Android operating system are being shipped every day, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on Thursday.
Schmidt, speaking at Google’s annual shareholder meeting at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, said the open-source Android system is now being used on 34 mobile devices in 49 countries.
“It looks like Android is going to be either the number one or number two player” in the mobile phone market, he said at the meeting, which was streamed live on Google-owned YouTube.
Google makes its Android software available to handset manufacturers and also sells its own smartphone, the Nexus One.
“Our partners are shipping about 65,000 Android handsets per day, but if you check the blogosphere you’ll discover there are some reports that that number might be quite low,” Schmidt said.
Sales of more than 2 million Android handsets a month would approach those of Google rival Apple, which reported sales of 8.75 million iPhones last quarter.
According to industry research firm NPD, US sales of smartphones running Android actually surged past those of Apple in the first quarter of the year.
Android-powered smartphones accounted for 28 percent of US consumer sales, compared with 21 percent for the iPhone, NPD said.
Canada’s Research in Motion, maker of the popular Blackberry, retained the top spot with 36 percent of US smartphone sales in the quarter.
“Our strategy is very different from everybody else’s,” Schmidt said of Android. “We license our code for free, so that’s really pretty revolutionary.
“We’re trying to build an entire ecosystem of openness, the inverse of the other guys,” he said, without mentioning Apple by name.
Google cofounder Larry Page, who also attended the meeting, said the strategy of getting more devices running Android provides benefits “through more [Google] searches and other things that we do.
“I think you’ll see that as those products mature we’ll figure out how to make more money from them,” Page said.
Schmidt agreed, saying “while it’s true that we’re very happy to give away Android, the applications and the services that can be provided on a very large, very broad framework can be enormously valuable over the next five or 10 years.”
He added that the company’s situation in China “seems to be stable” following its decision two months ago to stop censoring Web search results.
Google has “maintained our business relationships and our engineering centers in China. The situation seems to be stable,” Schimdt said in response to a question from a shareholder, although he added that it could always change.
“Should the Chinese government become upset with us, or become further upset with us or what have you, they do have the ability to change this outcome,” he said.
“From Google’s perspective we made our decision, we’ve implemented it, we want to continue to serve the Chinese citizens,” Schmidt said. “We want to continue our business operations in China.”
Google last month stopped censoring Web search results on its Chinese search engine and began redirecting users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong, a move that was praised by a number of shareholders on Thursday.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique