The Android smartphone OS will have a disruptive influence on the mobile industry over the next 18 months, said Friedrich Joussen, CEO Vodafone Germany.
Speaking to the Financial Times Deutschland, Joussen said that the Google OS will trigger a major cost reduction in smartphones while also improving their performance. The CEO expects the price of Android phones to fall by 50 per cent over the next 18 months, with performance doubling over the same period. This upheaval, Joussen said, will resemble the impact that Microsoft's Windows OS had on the PC business.
This radical shift, the Vodafone executive said, means that almost everyone will have a smartphone. However, Joussen also recognises that this upsurge in handsets will have a corresponding impact on mobile networks and will require the operators to invest billions each year in infrastructure improvements.
The company is considering integrating an m-payments service into Android handsets as a route to differentiate its services from Deutsche Telekom and O2 Germany. "There will be a very tough competition in the field of applications," Joussen said.
He added that the company is also looking to improve its existing Vodafone TV service--which currently broadcasts Bundesliga football--by asking the manufacturers of TV sets to include LTE receivers. This move would enable Vodafone Germany, according to the CEO, to bypass the fixed-line network it rents from Deutsche Telekom and boost its TV service using LTE to tap an "audience to millions."
For more:
- see this Financial Times Deutschland article (translated via Google Translate)
- see this Teltarif.de article (translated via Google Translate)
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