New Delhi: The news which is making the rounds is that Google plans to begin selling a cellphone directly to consumers.
Without a wireless carrier as a partner—reportedly also a possibility—Google would either have to sell a phone pitched at a much higher price than the competition or subsidize it as carriers do now. This should be worrying the shareholders.
It is unclear as to why Google needs to sell mobile phones to dominate mobile search. There may be some benefits from overseeing the integration of hardware and software, as Apple does. But Apple is a hardware manufacturer.
That’s not Google’s main focus. Google cast its mobile-phone design as
an experiment. Shareholders should hope it ends there.
