Moving on up
Google predicts that by 2014 there will be more mobile internet users than desktop web surfers so unsurprisingly has a mobile push for 2011.
Robert Hamilton, who is in charge of mobile projects at Google's London HQ told The Guardian that 2010 has seen ‘impressive' growth in the rate of mobile searches, recording an increase of 130 percent in Q3 alone.
According to Google's internal statistics, mobile searches have doubled in 2010, while search traffic on the Android platform has tripled in H1 2010.
Hamilton reportedly said: "By next year, 5bn mobile phones will be in service out of a total world population of about 7bn."
While not all mobile owners will be using Android, the platform is growing and recent Nielsen figures show that Android is set to overtake Apple and RIM in the US. Furthermore, Android's Market app store is also growing and closing the gap on Apple's App Store. It has now broken the 200,000 app barrier, according to stats by AndroidLib.
It looks like Google has been busy building its mobile team throughout 2010 as Hamilton said more engineers have been added to the search giant's London operations. His interview with the Guardian also implies that the mobile side of Google's business is becoming increasingly lucrative.
Mobile advertising now accounts for $1bn of Google's annual revenue, according to Hamilton, who said that the figure demonstrates: "it's now a very significant opportunity and can connect consumers with businesses wherever they are."
Voice Search has been in the news last year but remarkably a quarter of serach queries now come from voice, according to Google. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, Hamilton's big tip for 2011 is tablets as well as an array of new smartphones.
"We've added NFC support to Android, and it will be exciting to see how developers incorporate it into their applications," he reportedly said.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked up NFC functionality on Android 2.3 Gingerbread in November when the Nexus S was trumpeted. He was keen to show off the new smartphone's NFC capability and was enthusiastic about using the technology to pay for good in shops having used a camera to identify them.
Hamilton said: "So far NFC hasn't had huge take-up outside Japan or a few specific applications such as the Oyster Card but there are some big opportunities out there."
As his lowlight of the year, he picked scratching his iPad screen - "very annoying".
