Viet Son Net

BARCELONA, Spain–Touting a mobile future dependent on the convergence among traditional computing, connectivity and cloud computing, Google CEO Eric Schmidt also vehemently denied the company plans to reduce operators to little more than “dumb pipes.” The executive’s comments came during a far-ranging and engaging keynote appearance here at Mobile World Congress. Schmidt was quick to shoot down an audience member’s assertion that Google’s mobile vision does not make sufficient room for its network operator partners: “We feel very strongly that we depend on the successful business of operators globally,” he said. “We need advanced, sophisticated networks.”

Schmidt took the Barcelona stage following an amusing, self-deprecating video produced by Google for the Mobile World Congress crowd. In the hour that followed, he outlined an evolving mobile ecosystem heralded by growing smartphone penetration and accelerating mobile Web adoption–according to Schmidt, more than 60,000 Google Android-based devices now ship each day worldwide, double the number just a quarter earlier. Continued growth depends on the cloud, Schmidt said.

“Applications are sharing-intensive, and the cloud is all about sharing and replication,” Schmidt explained. “An application that does not leverage the power of the cloud is not going to wow anybody.”

In related news, Google announced Tuesday that Android will offer full support for Adobe Systems’ Flash 10.1 runtime. Palm also vowed to support Flash 10.1 on its webOS platform, and said Flash would be made available to its Pre and Pre Plus devices sometime this month.