In mobile advertising, Google is wrestling with how to make as much money on phones as it has on the ads that appear on desktop computers. Its fourth-quarter earnings report Thursday showed that it is continuing to struggle with lower ad prices on phones. Yet some of the new types of ads it has introduced have paid off handsomely, as have mobile businesses like the Play store for Android devices.
But in other areas, like manufacturing smartphones, Google has decided that the business is better left to someone else. On Wednesday, it announced that it would sell Motorola Mobility, which it bought less than two years ago for $12.5 billion, to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. Motorola’s $384 million loss in the fourth quarter contributed to Google’s failure to meet analysts’ earnings expectations for the quarter.
Google executives would prefer that people stop talking about mobile at all.
“People aren’t distinguishing what they’re doing on different screens, so advertisers should be more agnostic about where they reach the user,” Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer, said on a conference call with analysts. “The fundamental tenet is not to speak about mobile, mobile, mobile. It’s really about living with the users. What device are you on? What’s your question? How can we assist you? That’s a much broader and richer set of activities for us.” Read More News>>