We were perched in the balcony this afternoon for Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote address at Mobile World Congress. For those of you following us on Twitter (good boys and girls), you already know what went down. For those who don’t, hit us up after the break.
For the most part it was a lot of industry talk — and it was a lot of good industry talk. Sure, everybody’s focused on the number bomb Schmidt dropped on us — 60,000 Android devices shipping every day. And that’s a good thing to note. But that also points to how large the industry is growing as much as anything. Considering that Android’s showing up in everything from MIDs to netbooks to phones to microwave ovens, what did you expect the numbers to do?
Another cool point Schmidt made was in explaining Google’s “Mobile First” mentality. That should be pretty self-explanatory, and, again, it’s a testament to the growth — and predicted future growth — of the industry that Google really is putting mobile first. (And when you hear that, think mobile ads. Google still makes most of its money in ad revenue, a point Schmidt reiterated in the Q&A.)
Getting away from the shop talk, we saw some cool new features on Android. Voice search was demoed — in German — and there even was optical character translation via Google Goggles. Scan and translate. Very cool. No mention of real-time voice translation.
Then Erick Tseng — the man responsible for Android these days — showed what so many of you are waiting for: Honest-to-goodness Flash 10.1, running on the Nexus One. Interestingly, he demoed it on the same Alien Attack game that Adobe showed off several months ago. That can’t be a coincidence.
The Q&A got a little heated: Folks, Schmidt didn’t become a CEO by not being prepared to answer whatever was thrown his way. Remember that.
Anyhoo, it was a good talk. Glad we were there. And, no, he didn’t say when your Android phone is getting the 2.1 update.