Not sure if this is the best strategy. True if Google does this now phone makers would have to oblige but we have to remember Google needs to keep Android profit in low profile before the lawsuit sets in. Once that is done Google can start charging fees, however.
It’s time for Google to try something radically different: Close Android. License it—you know, sell it in exchange for money!—to phone makers.
According to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, Google makes between $6 and $10 in ad revenue per Android user per year. That’s not nothing; going by the latest reported rate of 255 million new Android phones a year, that’s about $2.5 billion in revenue on Android. But that pales in comparison to Apple’s iPhone revenues ($20 billion in the last quarter alone).
Won’t licensing Android turn phone makers away from Google’s OS? That may have been a worry a few years ago, before manufacturers had committed to the OS. But now Google and major handset makers are stuck on the Android train.
via How Google can save Android: Close it. License it. Swim in the profits. | PandoDaily.
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