Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, World wide web, Google (GOOG), iPhone, Smartphones, Technology
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt often states that the mobile frontier is the next biggest opportunity for Google. In terms of the math, he’s correct: there are many more cellphones in use worldwide than Personal computers — all it takes is to get customers accessing the internet on their phones. So far, success has been blended, however, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)’s iPhone is changing the game. iPhone users are going on the internet constantly.
The web search giant has just taken a massive leap in that direction, now that it has announced YouTube Mobile availability on millions of existing cellphones. The more customers that buy advanced, 3G-capable wireless phones, the more potential customers Google will have accessing YouTube content and even uploading videos directly from their handsets.
YouTube mobile product manager Dwipal Desia indicated, “It’s basically the full YouTube experience you can get on the desktop — on the phone.” With YouTube easily the world’s most popular on the web video property, can Google transfer this to the mobile arena in the next year or two? Getting customers to use YouTube Mobile is the largest barrier — because once you’ve used it, it’s hard to resist (from my experience, anyway).
Even though Google referenced the iPhone and phones from service provider Helio, the company did say that the full YouTube video experience wasn’t available on handsets from the second-largest wireless carrier, Verizon Wireless. The next step, of course, will be for Google to find out how it can monetize YouTube Mobile.
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