Eric Schmidt: Android on Track to Cross 1 Billion Mark This Year

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is very optimistic about Android. Its path, however, is separate from the path of Chrome OS, as Schmidt has more or less put to rest persistent rumors that the two operating systems would soon merge.

It’s a story he’s been repeating since the company moved Chrome OS and Apps head Sundar Pichai into the Android lead position vacated by Andy Rubin. “I would be careful about confusing organization design with product design,” Schmidt said during a wide-ranging chat at AllThingsD’s Dive into Mobile Conference in New York on Tuesday.

1 Billion Androids Until Year’s End

Schmidt also praised those who are doing new things with Android, “I think it’s fantastic. This is what open source is about.” He added that it’s one of the primary reasons why Android is number one in the world right now. For some perspective on that, Schmidt rattled off a number of recent Android adoption figures:

• 750 million Android phones in use today


• 320 carriers


• 160 countries


• 700k application


• 1.5 million sales or activations every day

Android will, Schmidt believes, cross the 1 billion mark this year.

The key to growth for Google’s Android (and likely most other handset manufacturers and mobile OS companies), however, is the developing world.

“Our goal is to reach everybody,” said Schmidt, and one way to do that is to get handset prices down to $100 or $70, which are key price points for the 5 billion people who are still without smartphones.

Traveling

North Korea might be considered among those nations. Schmidt traveled there in January as part of research for his book, The New Digital Age, which arrives next week.

“It’s the last place where there is essentially no connectivity,” said Schmidt. He recalled how the North Koreans would ask him about something the U.S. State Department just said and he responded, “that’s very interesting. Tell us, because we’re not online.”

Overall, Schmidt said he had never seen “a system that’s that thought controlled.”

Cool Future

Though Schmidt’s new book is copyrighted by Google (all the proceeds are going to charity), this is not a treatise on the future of the massive Mountain View, CA, company. Instead it’s a broader look at the massive digital sea changes happening now and coming in the near future.

One thing Schmidt spoke about was medical monitoring. “I used to say that you’ll have 10 IP address on your body…and it looks like that’s going to happen through medical monitoring,” said Schmidt. But when questioned about the privacy implications of, say, a digital pill you swallow so your doctor can get alerts when something inside you is amiss, Schmidt cracked, “You choose to take it. The definition of opt-in is ‘I took the pill.’ “

Of course, Schmidt also regularly dogfoods Google projects like driverless cars and Google Glass.

Schmidt, who was not wearing Google Glass because they still don’t work well with real glasses, said “For me the experience was not the screen, it was the fact that you can talk to it and it can talk back to me. After [people] start using it, they’ll do some amazing things with ‘query with Google Glass.’ ”

As for driverless cars, Schmidt told the audience it takes about 20 minutes to adjust to letting the car drive for you. “Basically then you sort of calm down.”

Schmidt also insists that computerized driving is safer than a human behind the wheel. “What is the great source of death in America today? Cars….You realize how profoundly bad it is having people driving cars as opposed to computers driving cars.”

All Google Can Do For You

While Schmidt also fielded a number of questions about privacy (which he welcomes), he envisions a future where computers are much more involved in our lives, solving every known problem. “People are good at intuition, living our lives. What are computers good at? Memory.”

A world in which all that information is at our fingertips is probably not much different than the smart-phone carrying world you live in today, but Schmidt said it’ll be a sea-change for the developing world. “The average person in developing worked has no information. So the jump is even more profound.”

[Via Mashable]

Eric Schmidt: Android on Track to Cross 1 Billion Mark This Year