At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha hinted that Google might be on the cusp of releasing its own answer to iTunes in the coming months.
In reference to their upcoming tablet, the $799 Xoom, Jha said that Android Honeycomb 3.0 would put Motorola in a better position to compete with the iPad because it “adds video services and music services.”
“If you look at Google Mobile services [in Android] today, there’s a video service, there’s a music service,” Jha said. Then he corrected himself. “That is, there will be a music service.”
Android has long needed an official analog to the iTunes Music and Video Store. Last March, Google slurped up SimplifyMedia, who developed software that allows iTunes users to stream media to other computers and devices. It’s unknown what Google wanted SimplifyMedia for, and it’s possible that the acquisition was just a blocking maneuver (Apple would have a lot to gain from purchasing Simplify for their cloud-aspirations), but it’s likely that Google would put their acquired talent and technology to work on their own answer to iTunes.
In addition, Google has been rumored to be inking deals with music publishers. Honeycomb is due out in the next few months: if Jha’s thoughts on the matter are accurate, we might not be far away from seeing Google finally launch a media store of their very own.