Google Takes Gold and Silver in Japan: NTT DoCoMo and KDDI
Soon 80 percent of the mobile phones in Japan will feature the Google search engine.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Google will have an 80 percent share of all Japanese local mobile searches. Google partnerships with the #1 and #2 mobile carriers in Japan forces Yahoo and MSN to compete for the bronze.
Here’s the math: Google (NTT DocCoMo + KDDI) = 80 percent of the Japanese mobile phone market. Not a bad equation.
Google announced today a partnership with NTT DoCoMo to place the Google search box, apps and services on 48 million mobile users in Japan.
Nothing extraordinary here — bigger share of searches, ubiquity of Gmail — all in search of local mobile ad revenue, and of course, indexing all the world’s information.
The partners aren’t strangers: Google NTT Docomo are shooting for 10 billion yen (only 942 million USD) in shared ad revenue (split undisclosed) with a Linux-based mobile handset in Japan.
Expect more partnerships post-Davos and pre-Google earnings announcements.