The Motorola Backflip, the first AT&T smartphone based on Google’s Android mobile operating system, will hit stores on March 7 with Yahoo as its default mobile search engine instead of Google’s own search tool.
Most if not all previous Android devices launched in the U.S. have arrived at retail with Google installed as the default search option, although Motorola earlier offered Chinese consumers the option to select Baidu as their primary search service, fiercemobilecontent.com says.
“We have a long-standing relationship with AT&T and more than 80 carrier partnerships around the world for our award-winning mobile-search experience,” Yahoo vice president David Katz writes in an emailed statement published by BusinessWeek. Google declined comment: “[The Backflip] is not a Google-branded product and, therefore, product inquiries should be directed to AT&T and Motorola,” the digital services giant said.
Mobile phones in the U.S. accessed Google Search more than any other website between January and September 2009 according to data released by The Nielsen Company late last year. Google now accounts for more than 9 percent of all mobile web page views in the U.S., per browser development firm Opera Software’s most recent State of the Mobile Web report – Google’s mobile search portal far outpaces Yahoo (4.3 percent of all page views) and Microsoft’s Bing (just 0.03 percent). Opera adds that search-portal related views make up 13.5 percent of total U.S. mobile page views, with each unique user averaging 39.9 search-based page views per month.
