2010 Year Of Smart Phones

will perhaps be remembered as the day on which the smartphone evolved into what Google is now calling the superphone! On Tuesday, Google unveiled the worst kept secret on Internet: a brand new cell phone, designed by Google and manufactured by HTC, called Nexus One.

Nexus One represents the next frontier in the company's $20bn core business of selling advertising through search and is its first direct foray into the handset market. It runs on the Web giant's Android OS (joining 20 other devices) and has put Google on a collision course with Apple's iPhone, RIM's Blackberry and various other smartphones.

Currently, it is only available in the US but will be sold shortly in Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore. The wait could be a little longer for Indian enthusiasts.

Due to meltdown, the overall sales for mobile phones remained flat in Q3 2009. However, smartphone sales continued to grow by nearly 15% as they have, ever since the market was redefined by Apple's iPhone. As per estimates, smartphones have now become the new laptops and will capture 37% of the global market by 2014, a leap from 16% in 2009.

Google's emergence as a retailer is an escalation in the budding power struggle between Apple and Google, as both view the mobile market as a key to their continued success.

Analysts are expecting that Nexus One will lead to an annual 100% growth in Google's mobile ad revenue worth $75 million, because of better control over the Android and mobile search environment.

Gradually, all the market players will be willing to join hands with Google for the sake of market efficiencies. However, in order to truly transform the mobile market and achieve its ultimate goal of selling maximum ads, Google will have to find ways to innovate. It will have to play around with its marketing and manufacturing strategies.

It can bring out a smartphone-starter plan, offering a cheaper data plan to attract the I-don't-need-a-smartphone crowd. Google should mainly aim to provide low-cost, uncontrolled devices with low-cost connections, as this would mean more people using its software and seeing its ads, even if that phone is made by Motorola, Nokia or even Apple.

Google voice search in phones

The next time you want to do a Google search from your mobile phone, don’t bother to type. Simply hold the talk button and speak aloud your search question

.But to avail this unique Google Voice Search option, you should have a Nokia Smartphone.

Google on Monday launched the Google Mobile App (GMA), which will enable the user to access all the key Google applications.

As Alok Goyal, Product Manager, Google India, explained ,you open the Google Voice Search, you can reach other applications like Search, Orkut, Maps and News."

The free-to-download application, which initiates a search when the user speaks the search term into the phone, provides almost everything a person on the move would like to learn -cricket updates, nearest restaurants, local business listings etc.

They can also use the application to access Google Search for virtually any information. Since most Nokia phones have just 12 keys, which users have to press multiple times to get the letters, Alok said the speech-to-text interface has been introduced.

"The technology is good enough to understand most things we say in Indian English," he pointed out.

Google has announced its latest Google Search client for S60 Mobile Phones. The earlier version of the software provided quick Google search access right from the home screen of S60 devices. However, this new version adds the voice search functionality as well.

As the name suggests, voice search allows you to search by just saying the query instead of the old fashioned way of typing it. The application is supported by select S60 devices. Since we did not have a Nokia device at the time of publishing this, we tried the application on an Omnia HD and it worked pretty well - except for the Voice Search part, which never understood what we spoke.

This in spite of the fact that we had the Indian English accent option turned on! However, since the Omnia HD is not in the list of officially supported devices, it might just be a compatibility issue. It should work fine on a normal S60 Third Edition handset. To download the latest version of Google Voice Search, head here using your phone s default browser.

Google has also said that Search by voice is now available in Mandarin Chinese (the most spoken language in the world). Here s a video on how the Voice search functionality actually works Google's voice search tool now understands Chinese. The Internet giant announced on Monday that users of Nokia S60 series mobile phones could now search the Internet using voice commands in Mandarin Chinese."Up until now voice search has only been available in English, but the new version of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 devices works for Mandarin speakers, too," Google said in a blog post."Although this only works on the Nokia S60 at the moment, we're working on adding support for Mandarin speech recognition to our products on other mobile platforms, such as Android and iPhone," Google said.The Mountain View, California-based company cautioned that bringing Mandarin speech recognition to mobile phones had posed an "engineering challenge" and may not always produce the desired results."Bear in mind that this is a first version of our system in Mandarin, and it might not be as polished as our English version," Google said.

"For example, if you have a strong southern Chinese accent, it might not work as well as for people with a BeijingAustralia, Britain, India and the United States.

The step was taken in direction considering the difficulty Nokia S60 (N95/E71) users having 12-digits keypad faces while type words.

Installing new version of Google Mobile App places a shortcut widget on the Nokia phone’s home screen. This enables vocal search or written query directly from Application, avoiding delay required to launch web browser for search query.