The Big Mystery With Google's $8 Billion Mobile Business


Bangalore: Google, the search giant's Q3 earnings was released last weekend and according to it, the company had $8 billion in mobile revenue, mostly contributed by the advertisements. But the only problem with statistics is, it failed to impress many, especially some analysts.

According to the analysts, Google’s numbers actually seems "unbelievable." Mashable quoted a report from eMarketer stating “the entire mobile ad business in the U.S. would be worth $2.6 billion in this year and may be $6.6 billion in 2016. Also the global market figure is $6.5 billion for 2012.” Then where did Google’s amazing numbers come from?

Mashable did a complete breakdown of the figures and found some interesting facts.

Google’s total revenue for Q3 is $14.1 billion which would imply total annual revenue rate of more than $56 billion.

Out of this, $8 billion comes from mobiles i.e., 14 percent of Google’s entire revenue base. But if we consider the company was referring to the added mobile revenues from Motorola Mobility, then the conclusion would be most of this is from device sales and not ads.

The remaining part of revenue comes from Google’s traditional advertising business. And if we go by Google’s figures, then on removing the revenue from mobile ads, which is a new business for the company, its regular revenue which comes from PCs actually declined two percent from the same quarter last year.

Moreover, with the increased Smartphone numbers, there are a large number of queries come from users of hand held devices, and the increased search drives the price per click down. According to Mashable, “Mobile platforms have added a vast new supply of cheap inventory, and when supply outstrips demand, prices fall.” So it will eventually lead to slow down of paid click too, which would be a headache for the tech giant.