“The biggest growth areas are clearly going to be in the mobile space,” Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, said when asked about new opportunities at a conference here this week. In case his point wasn’t clear, Mr. Schmidt drove it home: “Mobile, mobile, mobile.”
The new offerings from the search companies are just the beginning. Search services that pinpoint a phone’s location using the Global Positioning System or that accept voice commands are coming out of the labs. Google has gone so far as to build a prototype phone with its own software inside, according to one person who has seen it.