Oracle on Android: ‘Each day’s worth of activations likely generates approximately $10 million in annual mobile advertising revenue for Google’

Software maker Oracle estimated that each day’s worth of Android activations makes Google approximately $10 million in annual revenue while also strengthening its Google+ service, German patent blogger Florian Mueller wrote on his FOSS Patents blog today. Oracle made this claim at a German court in regards to its patent infringement claims against the search giant:

While this case awaits trial, more than 700,000 Android-based devices are activated every day, all fundamentally built around the copyrighted Java APIs and the enhanced performance enabled by Oracle’s patents. Each day’s worth of activations likely generates approximately $10 million in annual mobile advertising revenue for Google.

Oracle did not explain its math, however, leading Mueller to suspect that the figure is based “on the assumption of annual advertising revenues of $14 per Android user.” Interestingly, Oracle wrote in court documents “Analysts have predicted that the number of new Android devices will reach 2.5 million per day within twelve months.” However, it is not just about mobile advertising, the success of Android is benefiting Google’s other properties, namely its Google+ social network…

Per Oracle’s filing:

This revenue does not even include all the other value Android generates for Google, ranging from Android Market revenue, to other Android-related services, to ensuring that Google will not be locked out of the mobile business, to lucrative relationships with manufacturers of myriad devices on which Android can and does run, to the inordinately valuable access Android provides to customers for its new social network service, Google+.

The software maker also dissed Google’s proclaimed Android openness:

Indeed, Android has enabled Google to wield such power with regard to search and other services that its Android distribution and licensing practices – far from the ‘open’ practices Google has proclaimed it lives by – are under investigation by competition law agencies in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

Google does not earn revenue directly, because it provides Android mobile operating system to phone vendors free of charge. Nevertheless, as more people use smartphones and click on adverts placed in smartphone apps and web pages optimized for mobile viewing, Google rakes in mobile advertising revenue. Unlike desktop advertising, Google pretty much rules the mobile advertising landscape with its AdSense for Mobile and AdMob networks.