Here is how a CEO talks to the Wall Street Journal when he wants his company’s stock pumped up. Today, Eric Schmidt was quoted saying,

“If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can’t make money from that?”

This was in response to his statement and belief that Android could potentially make $10 billion dollars a year in advertising revenue for Google. Schmidt came to this conclusion with some very absurd numbers and small calculations of 1 billion Android users at $10 worth of ad revenue per user per year. Wow, that was easy to do. The fact is is that Android has been growing at a steady pace with an estimated 160,000 handsets activated a day. That sounds like a lot of phones and it is, but even at that pace it would take around “17 years to reach that goal”.

The Android onslaught, although crazy as it is now, could eventually slow down making a billion handsets completely out of reach. Many sites are spinning this saying that “Google is going to make $10 billion a year from Android”, when in reality this is just pure CEO fluff. I love me some Android, don’t get me wrong, but to say that “all we need is a billion Android devices in existence and poof! we have $10 billion” is a complete longshot.

Via [Phandroid]

Android 1.6+ users with Google Maps should be able to find “an even better way to find places nearby” thanks to an update from Google. There is now an updated version of Maps that offers direct access to Places, which should help people looking to discover what business are located nearby.

Places can now provide quick access for locating restaurants, hotels, bars, attractions, ATM’s, gas stations, or user-defined categories for common searches. The icon can be placed on the homescreen for quick access, and a search will lead to an improved version of Place Pages with details that were not previously seen in the mobile version of the site. Now you’ll get pricing, parking, hours, and menu information when available.

Google has made it clear that it wants to be the go-to-source for information, and Places is an important part of that strategy in the mobile sector. To enable the new features, download Google Maps to an Android 1.6 or higher phone. You should then see places available in your homescreen launcher.

[Google]

Well that didn’t take long, now did it? Google announced last week that it was receiving its last shipment of Nexus One’s from HTC and would stop selling the device directly. Just a short time later, Google has confirmed that it doesn’t have any more Nexuses for sale since the last shipment has already sold out. The Google Phone Store – for now, at least – is closed.

Google will continue selling the Nexus One through retail partners like Vodafone, but it is no longer selling the device directly. When users visit Google.com/Phone, the portal simply returns an apologetic message letting the public know that the shop is closed:

“The Nexus One is no longer available for purchase directly from Google. For more information on how to purchase the Nexus One, check out our help center.“

And just like that, it was gone.

There’ has been endless discussion about whether the Nexus One was a failed experiment or just a runaway success of Google attempting to promote Android. In a way, both sides of the issue are right. The Nexus One attempted to disrupt the current U.S. model of carrier exclusivity and subsidized phones, but there was too much resistance from carriers and consumers for that to happen on a wide scale. Andy Rubin admitted as much when Google first said it would close the store:

“[The web store] remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from,” Rubin said.

However, there’s no question that from a mindshare standpoint, the Nexus One absolutely pushed Android to new heights. There was nothing like it prior, and even after six months on the market, the N1 remains arguably the best Android experience available. Google has said that it has no plans to develop a sequel, and the closure of the store seems to make that plausible. But after “showing what Android is capable of” with the first Nexus, it would be a real shame to not see a follow-up push it even further. The store may not have worked, but the phone most certainly did.

Have you ever wondered why companies make such a big deal about being the default search provider on phones? Because it has the potential to lead to stacks of advertising money.

During its Q2 2010 earnings call, Google declared that search traffic on Android tripled in the first half of 2010. In the last six months, Google’s mobile traffic has increased 500% on all devices, and “Android is accelerator of that,” according to Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president of Product Management.

Google enjoyed much of its growth in the mobile sector because it is the original – and for a long time, only – search option on mobile devices. But the debut of Yahoo search on the Backflip earlier this year (now available on other Android devices) and the impending launch of Bing on Android, they may not see such runaway growth. Still, Google is optimistic about Android’s earning potential. The company says costs on Android aren’t anything to worry about and they are focused on “building” Android, rather than focusing on turning a profit (Ed. note: Google tends to speak vaguely when questioned about how much revenue Android generates, often saying it’s too early or they’re focused on “building the platform”).

As for the Nexus One, Google also revealed that it will stop tracking sales of the device after the end of the next quarter (July-September). Google previously announced that it will sell the Nexus One through retailers but never gave an exact date of when it would close up shop on Google.com/Phone. It appears Q3 2010 will be the last time that consumers are able to purchase a Nexus One directly from the company.

Google today announced that Android is chugging along very nicely, thank you. In its quarterly earnings call for Q2 2010, Google revealed that the Android Market has more than 70,000 apps, slightly more than the 68,000+ that we heard last month. Android’s rapid growth in daily activations and developers betting on an increased userbase are likely what encouraged developers to push the Market’s app total to double since March.

You may have read that the Android Market would cross the 100,000 mark at the end of the month but that number is actually a little unreliable. The 90,000-plus total stems from estimates taken from AndroLib.com, a third-party Market tracker that estimates the number of apps available in the Market. AndroLib’s estimates are routinely higher than Google’s official counts: in March, AndroLib counted 35,000, while Google counted about 30,000.

Whatever the exact number is – obviously we put more trust in Google’s tally – that’s a whole lot of apps; more than you’ll ever be able to fit on your phone. Let’s just hope we keep getting some good ones.

Even though many big name manufacturers including Sony and Logitech got behind the announcement of Google TV back in May, it appears that the number two LCD maker in the world just isn’t completely convinced. LG appears to still be “mulling over” the idea of introducing their own line of web enabled TVs that include the Google TV platform.

In a statement today to Dow Jones Newswire LG’s chief executive, Simon Kang, had this to say,

“Google TV could spark strong interest in the market, but the reason we are deliberating is because Google may one day dominate the software space and we don’t want to end up as just a hardware provider.”

It appears that LG doesn’t want to lose some of its power to the “big bad Google” and feels that the possibilty of creating their own TV software may be better in the long run. The interesting thing here is that LG’s chief understands that Google TV has a 50/50 chance of succeeding in the market when so many of these types of ventures have come and gone quickly (thing webTV). LG doesn’t want to “bet the farm” on an idea that, although executed better than anything we’ve seen before, is something that just won’t catch on.

It remains to be seen whether or not everyone will go all in on Google TV, but without the support from big name manufacturers like LG Google is going to have a hard time convincing the mainstream.

Via [Total Telecom]

App Inventor for Android simplifies the development process and provides drag-and-drop functions for creating apps. You don’t need to know Java, C+, or even HTML – just move a few things around, click a few buttons, and you’ve got yourself an app.

And that’s why it sucks.

To be fair, I haven’t even opened App Inventor so I can’t say that this What-you-see-is-what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor sucks; I’m simply saying that the idea and likely byproduct of it will probably stink up the Android Market. It’s already become annoying dealing with thousands of soundboards, ringtones, and sexy wallpaper apps. Being able to create without any programming knowledge will probably double the number of crappy apps. I can’t help but see this as Android’s version of terrible websites created with Frontpage, Geocities, and other lame WYSISWYG editors.

I pray that I’m proven wrong. Maybe App Inventor will turn out to be a clever way for people with lots of creativity and limited programming skills to build something fun and useful. We’ll know soon enough. Here are some apps created with App Inventor.

Recent AdMob data suggests that Android is strongest in North America and Western Europe, and weaker in Asia and Eastern Europe. Expect that to change if Google has its way.

BusinessWeek reports that Google plans to increase Android’s reach in India and China. Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin told BW that his company will work to put Android on more devices in Asia, citing Huawei and LG as two partners. Google will offer more assistance to phone makers and create new ways to monetize apps to increase Android adoption.

The Google team revealed at I/O 2010 that it would soon make an aggressive push into Latin America, but I think it’s smarter to make Android adoption in Asia Google’s top priority. A third of the world’s population resides in China and India and both countries are “emerging markets” (growing economies with increasing buying power) in which Googles wants to be a major player. They’ll also have to make paid apps more accessible for international users.

Nokia has a stranglehold in Eastern Europe and Asia based on data from AdMob and other sources. However, as Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi points out, it could be cheaper for Asian companies to build Android phones now that chipmaker MediaTek has joined the OHA. It currently costs about $200 to deliver a low-cost Android handset compared to $170 for low-cost Symbian phones.

As the world inches closer to switching from a cash society to an all-digital payment society, companies are finding new ways to let users exchange money. PayPal bumps transactions between iPhones, Square can process credit card transactions on a Nexus One, and now Google is offering Google Checkout support between Android and Chrome.

The Android Payment Extension is designed to help merchants accept debit and credit card purchases when someone doesn’t have cash available. Street vendors, weekend garage sale folks, or just two people in a coffee house looking to perform a transaction can now use Google Checkout and some QR codes to accomplish the task. Here’s how Google describes the process:

1. Create a Google Checkout merchant account and configure your tax on the Settings Tab

2. Use the Google Checkout Store Gadget Wizard to generate a webstore template

3. Fill in the Google Spreadsheet with information about the items you wish to sell

4. Create a Google Sites page and follow the wizard to embed the Store Gadget

5. Install the Android Payment Chrome Extension

Afterwards, the customer scans a QR code, logs into his/her Checkout account, and completes the transaction. It’s not the most elegant or quickest way to do business, but it’s another option when you’re in a pinch.

Now all Google needs to do is get more people using Google Checkout.

[Google, via Phandroid]

Many Android fans were awed and perhaps even aghast at the stunning sales figures for the iPhone 4. In just the past few days, Apple sold over 1.7 million phones. When you compare this with the “record-breaking” sales of the Sprint EVO, which totaled just over 66,000 in two days, you can see why folks are worried. Judging from a few recent blog posts on the topic, some are wondering if Android will be crushed out of existence by the hordes of iPhone users we have been seeing all over the media. However, I’m here to tell you: This is not a big deal for Android. Not yet, anyway.

THE USERS

Part of my evidence comes from a recent Crowdscience study which focused on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry users. The findings showed that iPhone and Android users were a lot alike: each group was highly loyal to their OS, was not likely to change platforms, and had very similar phone usage patterns. Blackberry users were the least loyal and the most likely to change platforms. So what does this data mean when you consider that there are over 25,000,000 iPhone users worldwide? (Apple sold 24.89 million iPhones in 2009). Simple. It means that Apple is likely to sell a whole lot of iPhones, many to the existing faithful.

As I have mentioned in my past articles, I have more than my fair share of friends and acquaintances with iPhones. Not surprisingly, most of them tell me that they are upgrading from their current 3G and 3GS models to the newest iPhone. (Some have actually decided to switch to Android, but that’s a distinct minority.) The Android side has the same pattern. Only this past weekend a friend of mine had just upgraded his entire family from G1s to the latest T-Mobile Android offerings. Obviously he could have moved everyone to iPhones, but he didn’t.

THE TECHNOLOGY

As Jobs pointed out in his keynote, the reasons to upgrade to iOS 4 include the following: better display, better processor, multitasking, and more flexibility for the user interface (custom wallpaper, app folders, etc). The first two items are already well-matched by high-end Android phones. The last two items are great selling points for iPhone users, but are almost meaningless to Android users, because these abilities were already built in to the core OS.

The App Store is the most common (and best) argument for iPhone supremacy. However, the Android Market has also been growing very quickly and has its fair share of spectacular apps unique to Android. While the App Store may have once had an incredible edge in terms of quality and quantity, that edge is disappearing. In the end, if the App Store has 600,000 apps and the Market has 250,000, no one will care that they can download 2,000 farting apps in one place vs. 1,000 in the other.

THE CONVERTS

My last bit of evidence is from personal experience. My friends in Southeast Asia really like iPhones, but they are hugely expensive. They tell me that owning one is like flashing the keys to your Porsche. As everyone knows, you can only get one kind of new iPhone from Mr. Jobs, but you can get into Android very cheaply through many vendors all over the world. If you’re familiar with the characteristics of so-called “disruptive technology,” you can understand why Android is a very serious threat for every other platform, including the iPhone.

I have also had lots of people ask me recently which Android phone to buy (very tough question, by the way, which I plan to answer in a series of posts), and most of them aren’t currently Android users.

This last part is the key. What will Blackberry, Symbian, and Palm users do if the mobile phone market does eventually come down to Apple vs Android? The sense I get is that if you bought a Palm or Blackberry instead of an iPhone in the past few years, you probably had something against the iPhone to begin with. In some cases, this is simply due to a dislike for AT&T, but in other cases people just don’t want to be part of the iPhone crowd.

So what would scare me? Have someone show me that Apple is selling their product to non-iPhone folks, at a rate significantly higher than Android is. That would be tough to do, given than Android’s market share has been growing like crazy, with no sign of letting up. Affordability, availability, and flexibility are really powerful marketing vehicles, and nothing has happened to make that change. While Steve Jobs tells 1.7 million new iPhone users that they are holding their phones the wrong way, Android’s growing presence keeps insisting that they are just holding the wrong phone.