Google mobile search queries up 500 percent since 2008

Google reports that mobile search queries have increased 500 percent over the past two years, with the digital services giant now on track to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue from its mobile search and display advertising initiatives. "Clearly, this is the future of search in the Internet," said Google senior vice president of product management Jonathan Rosenberg during the company's third quarter earnings call Thursday afternoon. "Our mobile search queries have grown five times over the past couple of years, and of course, a lot more of those queries are now coming from Android phones." (During Google's Q2 earnings call in mid-July, Rosenberg said searches on Android devices alone increased 300 percent over the first half of 2010.)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday that Android has grown "well past anything that I had ever hoped for," calling the mobile operating system "probably the largest single platform play available in the market today." Schmidt added that Android customers use mobile search twice as much as other smartphone customers.

Android now represents 17.0 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, according to data published last month by digital measurement comScore. Android's market share increased 5.0 percentage points during between April 2010 and July 2010, its growth coming at the expense of Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS and Research In Motion's (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry. While BlackBerry retains its overall lead, representing 39.3 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, that number slipped 1.8 percentage points from April's 41.1 percent share; as for iOS, it dropped 1.3 percentage points from 25.1 percent in April to 23.8 percent in July. Microsoft's Windows Mobile also continued to decline, falling from 14.0 percent in April to 11.8 percent in July--a 2.2 percentage point change.

Google reported Q3 earnings of $2.17 billion, up from $1.64 billion a year earlier--revenue increased 22 percent to $7.29 billion. "The increased transparency related to mobile and display segments will help to drive a higher valuation, as the company seems better positioned to grow robustly for a longer period of time," Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan told The Wall Street Journal.

For more on Google's Q3 results:
- read this release
- also check out the FierceWireless Q3 earnings page

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