It's 'mobile first' for Google

Google CEO Eric Schmidt fittingly chose Mobile World Congress to announce that, from now on, it will be 'mobile first' for Google's top programmers.

Shmidt claimed three unique areas had converged to make mobile, and of course mobile broadband with it, the number one space to concentrate its efforts: computing power, interconnectivity and the cloud. Talking to a packed house of mobile experts and commentators during his keynote speech, he said: "The phone is where these three all interconnect and you need to get these three right if you want to win."

Cloud computing has always been key to Google's approach, with its applications such as Gmail and GoogleMaps all being web-based and hosted. The phenomenal success of web-based applications such as Facebook, the BBC's iPlayer and Spotify has onlt sped up the charge toward the cloud concept, and it looks as if the successful launch of LTE mobile broadband - starting this year - will seal the deal.

Schmidt also spoke about the success of the Android platform for mobile, which now supports Flash 10.2 rather than Flash Lite - a nice one-up over Apple's iPhone.