In a recent post, I covered what took place on Google’s press call for the Nexus One and how the device sizes up against the iPhone.  There has been plenty of talk around many smartphone releases and whether each one would be the iPhone killer.  This brings us to the natural question of what does great competition for Apple’s smartphone and smartphone wars at large mean for advertisers?  As marketers, we need to get that discussion going.

But before I jump into the implications of the smartphone war, let’s quickly recap life before the iPhone. 

The chart below shows us that search access from the mobile browser was pretty flat until the inception of the iPhone in June of 2007. And for the most part, it has been on a steady incline since.

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There was much speculation of an official Google phone to challenge the smartphone champion (iPhone) even before the launch of the first Android device, the G1.  The Nexus One was introduced this week during a private web conference lead by Google’s Vice President of Product Management, Mario Queiroz, after a month of an intense buzz across the web.  During the press conference, the audience seemed discouraged because Google was not being as aggressive with their advertising as Motorola/Verizon was with the Droid.  I felt the same way until I witnessed their impressive banner advertising push first-hand.  When “Nexus One” also made it as a trending topic on Twitter, and as one of the top searches in Yahoo, my doubts were soon demolished.

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Over the past couple weeks there has been a bit of excitement around the new iPhone and the resurgence of Palm with the release of the Palm Pre.

The Palm Pre is being looked at by some as Palm’s savior as it’s their first device equipped to compete with the heavyweights of today since the days of the Treo 600 & 700 models.  The Pre boasts a full HTML browser, email access, GPS, WIFI access, music, video and a host of other features on Palm’s new Linux derived operating system.  Analysts are forecasting about 100,000 units were sold in the first weekend of its launch.

The new iPhone 3GS is a an expansion of the previous model (iPhone 3G) with some new features such as video recording/editing, voice control, larger storage, and an upgrade to the processor making it two times faster than the previous model.  Apple has reported a million plus sales of the new phone since its launch this past weekend.  The new 3GS is available for $199 and the 3G model is now being offered for $99.

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Once upon a time a company called America Online (AOL) provided their customers with access to the internet, email, desktop wallpapers and some of the first social tools (chat rooms) through a simple portal.  Their web pricing model was “by the minute” and later became unlimited web plans.  AOLs’ most prized feature to users was easy access to the internet.  Users were presented with interesting sites to visit, their email was all in one place, and they could chat with friends on IM or in chat rooms.  In comparison to today it took longer to find what was desired on the web due to slow dial up speeds and pc equipment, lack of tools to find information, products and etc.  AOL was able to build a successful business around helping non text savvy people discover new content on the web, providing an internet starter kit, so to speak.  Later down the road the technology advanced, web content rapidly increased, users became more aware of the web’s potential, and pricing to access the web became more competitive.  These evolutions created the necessity for web browsers which allow users to move easily about the web and discover new areas on their own terms. Thus, the launch of Netscape and Internet Explorer in the mid 1990s made this concept of browsing the web a reality.   At this point user behavior started to evolve into what we see now, search engine navigation.  Starting from the mid to late 90s Yahoo and Google stepped in to assist users in finding the information they were accustomed to finding in libraries, newspapers, magazines, and etc at their beck and call (search query).

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Keeping in pace with the recent trend of search engine and mobile carrier deals, Yahoo! has inked an agreement with T-Mobile, becoming the on-deck search provider for devices on the T-Mobile network, excluding the G1 and the Sidekick phones. This deal arrived immediately on the heels of the AT&T/Yahoo agreement that recently went live.

So what do these types of deals mean for the mobile space?

1. Before these deals existed, on-deck search consisted of a simple search box that helped users find ringtones, wallpapers and other info in a limited database.  With these engine deals in place, on-deck search has opened up and mobile users are able to use the same engine databases that have helped them research health info, find restaurants, or prove a fact during a conversation with friends.
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