19 May 2006 | Author: Kirsten Spence

Google to take over mobiles in the Far East

China Mobile, China's largest mobile phone carrier, is quoted in saying that they are in talks with Google to launch an internet search engine for mobile services in China. This is a service that is already available from Google on Google.com/mobile for mobile users in the west, but has yet to really kick off and appears to be aimed at PDA users rather than those with mere mobile phones.

This revelation has come in the wake of news that revenues from traditional mobile phone services in China are on the decline and they desperately need a new way of wringing more coins out of Chinese pockets. Google wants to further their plans for world domination by getting themselves on anything connected to the internet - PCs are clearly not enough, the thinking goes: lets invade peoples' hand bags and pockets too... With China's population sitting at a staggering 1,313,973,713 people and rising at the last estimate, that sure is a lot of pockets.

"I recently met with Google's CEO for the second time. And we both share the same idea: how to turn cell phones into a new kind of internet search engine," said Wang Jianzhou, chairman and chief executive of China Mobile.

Wang didn't elaborate on the two companies' cooperation on the mobile search engine, but he said it will mean significant progress in China's mobile service. Representatives from Google weren't immediately available for comment, fuelling speculation, in this reporters mind at least, that they would rather keep this on the down low. This approach is understandable considering the media bashing they received with their last announcement concerning their involvement in Communist China, which went something along the lines of 'Google = Hypocrite' for agreeing to censor their index for "undesirable" or "politically sensitive" material.

Japan's Softbank Corporation, a new entrant into Japan's $78 billion mobile phone market, has announced it would set up a mobile phone handset and content joint-venture with Vodafone as it looks to take on NTT DoCoMo and KDDI. Shares in Softbank have consequently risen on news of the venture, which is expected to help the internet conglomerate procure phones at lower costs and offer innovative services.

They also have a partnership with search engine giant Google which will allow users to search content on both mobile phones and personal computers for the first time in Japan. Japan's mobile phone service providers have been looking for new ways to boost revenue in the, similarly maturing, Japanese market - such as by improving their mobile internet services. It does seem a little odd that they are playing catch up with us in the west considering the majority of mobile phone handsets in the world are either designed in Japan, made in Japan or are released in Japan before anywhere else in the world. But we have been toying with mobile internet services for a while now - it's slow, unpredictable and expensive (and totally addictive if you can get it working) but at least we have it. No doubt the Japanese version will be leaps and bounds ahead of the service we have here: simply because they just wouldn't stand for it any other way.

The Japanese have plenty of other ways to get online without using their mobile phone, a consequence of their overwhelming acceptance of miniaturisation, and so the question is will the Japanese go for it?

KDDI has stated it's more or less a done deal with Google to offer its search engine on KDDI mobile phones. Google will of course be competing with Yahoo! and Yahoo! Japan on this, but interestingly enough it appears Yahoo! Japan is none other than a Softbank subsidiary. Confused yet? Basically it means the same guy at the end of the day is getting all the money whether you think you have a choice or not.

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