Google CEO laments Nokia's deal with Microsoft

Google CEO Eric Schmidt took to the stage at Mobile World Congress to talk up the Android OS for tablets and phones and to admit that the search giant would have liked Nokia as a partner.

When asked about Nokia's choice of Windows Phone 7 as its smartphone system, Schmidt said that Google would have loved to see Nokia pick Android instead. Google tried to convince Nokia to choose Android, and it can all in all make that decision hereafter, Schmidt said.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive, said before this week that had the mobile-phone maker chosen Android, the market would have become a duopoly, with Apple and Android dominating. He said he preferred a three-horse race, and going with Microsoft would give Nokia a larger share of services revenue.

Nokia's choice nevertheless, Android has been dominating at Mobile World Congress. Vendors like HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have announced a plethora of new smartphones and tablets based on the operating system.

Schmidt said that there are 300,000 Android devices activated daily, and 150,000 apps in the Android app store - a number that has tripled in the past nine months. Developers however start with mobile apps because that's where the growth is, he added, saying that smartphone sales surpassed PC sales last quarter.

Number of trends at work

There are a number of trends at work, Schmidt said: cloud computing, which has been present for a long time; the fact that devices are packing in more and more power; and the fact that networks are getting more powerful. Approximately 98 percent of mobile-phone operators offer megabyte-per-second speeds, he claimed. What's important about LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology), the newest innovation for mobile broadband, is that it will create the possibility for another set of applications that we can only imagine, Schmidt said.

One of these new Android apps demonstrated by a Google employee onstage is Movie Studio, an app built for tablets that lets people edit videos. The demo showed how a user can drag a title on to an image, and as well re-order the items in the timeline of the video, by dragging and dropping. A pan-and-zoom effect can as well be added, and by gesturing with two fingers the user can make the video zoom into the photo.

Schmidt said that the increasing penetration of mobile phones offers hope for communicating with people around the world who are currently not connected online, and solving some of the biggest problems in the world, including terrorism and global warming.

Meanwhile, the company's YouTube video site remains a force to be reckoned with: Schmidt said that 35 hours of video is uploaded every minute to the site. Its revenue doubled in 2010, he said, and Google is monetising professional content.