Google seeks an edge with Android expansion

Google’s Android software is coming to cars, televisions, and watches this year, as the internet search giant races against Apple and other tech companies to extend its business into a rapidly widening field of internet-connected devices.

Google’s free Android software runs on more than three out of every four smartphones sold globally, a valuable entry point for consumers to access its money-making online services such as web search and maps.

At its annual developers’ conference this week, the company said the first cars running Android Auto software for navigation, music and messaging will hit showrooms later this year. More than 40 auto companies had signed onto its software development alliance.

Samsung and LG smartwatches running Android Wear, the version of Android tailored for wearable devices, went on sale yesterday, and executives also demonstrated how Android TV, reviving Google’s foray into streaming video, aims to give viewers an easy interface through which to search for and display content. The TV version of Android comes four years after Google’s first effort to enter the living room, via Google TV, failed to catch on with consumers.

“It’s a land grab,” said Sameet Sinha, an analyst with investment bank B Riley & Co. “The person who gets a platform which controls the devices could be the dominant operating system, not just of devices, it could be the operating system of your home.

“New platforms offer new opportunities for hardware sales, advertising sales, e-commerce sales, all of these.”

Google also unveiled Google Fit, which collates and tracks a user’s health and personal fitness information, similar to recently introduced services from Apple and Samsung. The tracking and analysis of health data is expected to become a big driver behind the adoption of smartwatches and other sensor-laden devices this year.

Google’s annual conference is designed to introduce new Android features to its army of developers, who are crucial in creating apps that keep the software popular as it competes with Apple’s iOS.

Apple and Google are now going head to head in emerging countries such as India and China, where there remains room to grow in terms of smartphone adoption, especially as compared with saturated markets like the US and Europe. Some 1bn people are now using Android devices, Google said.

The three-hour opening presentation was attended by about 6,000 developers, bloggers and journalists. The keynote address was interrupted at several points by protesters who were quickly escorted out.

Google has been the subject of disapproval for its use of shuttle buses to ferry employees from San Francisco to its Mountain View headquarters. The buses have become a symbol of the divide between Silicon Valley’s tech millionaires and those left out of the latest boom.