LG Electronics and Google Team Up to Enhance the Mobile Experience
LG Electronics (LG), a leading worldwide provider of advanced wireless handsets and accessories, and Google today announced a global collaboration to pre-install Google's services on millions of LG mobile phones.
Context & Ripple Effects
This deal lands in the middle of Google's March 2007 push to buy mobile distribution rather than wait for mobile web traffic: days earlier it launched a Pay-Per-Action beta for AdWords advertisers, and Search Engine Land has started tracking these OEM partnerships in a running deal-tracking chart.
The LG agreement — mobile Gmail, Maps and Blogger preloaded on selected handsets shipping worldwide from Q2 — was announced the same day Google disclosed an equivalent alignment with Samsung, so two of the largest handset makers are now bundling Google services at the factory level within hours of each other.
First-order effects
- Google gains default placement for its services on millions of LG phones without negotiating app-by-app with carriers, while LG gets a differentiated software bundle for handsets shipping from Q2.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's parallel arrangement means rival OEMs face preloaded Google services as table stakes, pressuring Motorola, Nokia and others toward comparable bundling deals or their own service partners.
- Carriers cede a layer of control over the on-device experience as handset makers strike direct software deals, weakening the operator deck as the primary channel for putting services on phones.
Third-order effects
- If factory preloading becomes the norm, handset manufacturers replace carriers as the gatekeepers deciding which mobile web services reach users — the structural position an operating-system owner would occupy.
The trend: Web incumbents are securing mobile distribution through OEM pre-installation deals, shifting the bargaining power over on-device defaults from carriers to handset makers.