After acquiring Android, Google has spent more than 300 man years making a beautiful mobile software platform exceptionally well designed for 3rd party developers.
With it’s declarative XML UI framework android help’s developers to rapidly develop the user interfaces for new applications – It allows developers to program with JAVA SE library, which is powerful and broader compared to JAVA ME. Android source code is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
So how is Google going to monetize it’s efforts?
iPhone single handedly forced the entire Mobile industry to turn to smartphones and Google had to cash on it and so it turned smartphone into more of an Internet device.Ofcourse Google is going to make money by Selling Ad’s on all the mobile application’s that get’s bundled with the Mobile phones.
Wait, Android source code is licensed under Apache 2.0, that means Yahoo or any internet company can get their apps bundled with android device and make money selling ad’s too,right? Yes, but it is very tough, because Google has much more control on Android than is obvious.
First of all Android is not a product but a platform, an OEM needs more than a year of effort and google’s help to make a working Android mobile phone. Android market is closed and Google has complete control over it. It is also romoured that Google will use analytics on Android devices to help the company refine it’s target ad’s thereby increasing it’s revenue, but with the increase in the Antitrust concerns about Google the company should probably be more careful about it.
I dont think u even understand mobile market nor do u understand business.
first – Android wasnt acquired. It was built with consortium of OHA, so its not a Google product/platform in the first place.
Google makes or will make lot of money through customizations/consultations and profit sharing with OHA companies.
Plus money through market.
Selling ads on app – Possible. But already lot of ad-networks venturing into it who come from mobile ad network background.
I think u should go back to school.
Ajit,
Thanks for your comment
as for google acquiring Android,link is provided in the post,I hope you believe BusinessWeek is a reliable source.
Google plays a major role in building the stack,if you can understand API’s please go through http://code.google.com/android/
As for making money out of android, I already gave my perspective why only Google will be able to make money out of selling ads on android.
As for going back to school, yes I am thinking about it
As far as I think the information is completely making sense to me. I heard these information in bits and pieces over the web, but u really did a great job by compiling them in a single article.
Nice job dude.
Hello,
Nice article, As per my opinion there are lot of ways in which google can make money. For Google its a far bigger strategic game then just selling Ads on mobiles.
Also it must have spend more then 300 man years
consider a team of 100-200 working on it for 4 years 
Its already started making money by having cut on all the apps sold on Google market for android.
Lets wait and watch the game .
Cheers,
Prashant
@Anupam @Prashant Thanks
@Prashant true there are other ways too,but what is more interesting is to see how Google molds android around it’s core business.