ASIA!

In a career that spans 26 years, Eric Schmidt has been many things. Until 2001 he was best known as the CEO of Novell, a Silicon Valley software firm. Today he is famed – and admired and feared and hated – as chairman and CEO of Google. But by the time he retires, the 53-year-old Schmidt may be known by another title – the man who saved China's mobile phone business.

Not that Schmidt had that objective in mind when he launched the first and long-awaited Google phone in October. At first glance, the phone is hardly impressive, especially when compared with the iPhone by Apple, of which Schmidt is a board member.

But the Google phone – which is a misnomer, since Google provides only the platform based on the computer language Java, and lets its many partners, such as T Mobile, produce the hardware – is likely to herald in as much of a revolution in mobile usage as the iPhone.

To understand why, one has to go across the Pacific from Google's headquarters in California to the many electronic malls in Shenzhen, China's No. 1 boomtown.

The variety of phones in those malls guarantees to bewilder any visitor. They come in all shapes and sizes, and have features undreamed of outside of China, or even outside of Shenzhen. Despite this, they all share a common characteristic – they have no brand, or sport a brand so unknown it might as well not be there.

They are China's so-called "black phones" – brand-less mobile devices produced on the cheap, almost all on stolen software platforms such as Windows Mobile. For a few years, black phones ruled the lower end of the Chinese market and threatened to overwhelm legitimate phone makers in the medium range and high end of the market as well.

But the gradual but inexorable move towards smartphones has put black-phone makers at a disadvantage. Smartphones require much more sophisticated operating software. They are also harder to be pirated. Most Chinese phone makers are too small or ill-capitalised to undertake the necessary research and development to make the jump. To make things worse, the legitimate phone makers are now attacking the low end of the market in efforts to pick up the slack in other segments. For a while, it looked like the days of the black-phone makers were numbered.

Then Schmidt introduced the Google phone with the Android operating system. Not only is Android easy to use, it is also free. This gives the Chinese phone makers a new platform. Suddenly, the field is tilted back in their favour. The advantage they used to enjoy – low cost, fast reaction time – can again be brought to bear on their much larger rivals.

The Google phone, like the iPhone, is also a platform to sell software. Unlike the iPhone, which caters to the upper end of the market, the Google phone is designed for all types. This gives the Chinese phone makers a potentially huge user base who want to add new software-based features to their phones. This additional source of revenue would be useful to sustain them in their fight to regain market share.

In all, the Google phone has breathed a new lease of life into the Chinese phone industry. If the Chinese phone makers can learn from lessons such as the poisoned milk scandal and improve their quality, they might give the likes of Nokia and Samsung a run for their money. And it is all thanks to Eric Schmidt.