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Towards the end of Google’s developer event launching its new Apps Marketplace, Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard offered some perspective on how the marketplace fits into Google’s broader strategy for business apps. For one thing, it means the company can build fewer apps.

Girouard said his team is often asked when they’re going to roll out additional apps — something for customer relationship management, for example, or expense reports or project management. In many cases, he said, the answer is “probably never.” Google’s expertise is in consumer apps, not business apps, so it’s mostly interested in offering taking consumer products and repackaging them for businesses, rather than starting from scratch with an enterprise apps. Most recently, you can see that pattern with Google Buzz, which was launched as a social sharing product, but which Googlers tell me is going to be if anything more useful for communication and collaboration within a company.

“We would rather offer a platform to others,” Girouard said. “This is really the beginning of that.”

He added that opening a marketplace and using third parties to build out its product ecosystem also means Google can put more energy into improving its existing apps like Gmail and Docs.

Companies: Google

People: Dave Girouard

Technology analyst firm Strategy Analytics just announced their latest forecast: Sony’s Playstation 3 will will outsell the Wii and Xbox 360 by the time they all end their product cycle. Say what?

Unfortunately analysts are a trusted source in the tech industry, but stuff like this makes me wonder why. SA predicted that 127 million PS3 units will be sold, 103 million Wii units, and an unknown number of Xbox 360’s. That’s right, despite the prediction that the PS3 will win 4evar, they didn’t bother to predict how many Xbox 360s will be sold. SA furthermore goes to predict that the PS3 will continue to be a commercially viable platform for years after the Wii has been replaced by it’s successor. I buy that, but only due to the Blu-ray angle. For years now, the PS3 has been one of the best Blu-ray players other there.

The author of the report goes one step further, predicting that while Nintendo has done a great job with the Wii, it’ll probably peak sometime during 2011, with the Xbox 360 doing the same in 2012 and the PS3 in 2014. All I know for sure is that I’m in the wrong business – Strategy Analytics is charging $6,999 for this report. Please don’t go buy it.

[via PC World]

Apple COO Tim Cook's warning from early 2009 wasn't the only one that handset makers received before Apple sicced the lawyers on HTC last week. According to a research note from Oppenheimer analyst Yal Reiner, Apple began warning top executives at companies such as HTC and Motorola in January that it wasn't too happy about seeing allegedly iPhone-related IP showing up in proposed new products.

According to "industry checks," Cook's comments last January during the quarterly analyst call—that Apple "will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal"—were taken seriously by the likes of LG, Samsung, and even Nokia. Though the Palm Pre openly flaunted multitouch capabilities (what most handset makers believed were at the heart of Cook's warning), its sales numbers haven't proven to be much of a concern for Apple so far.

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A few hours before Google officially announced its Apps Marketplace, I had a chance to interview someone at Google and a partner company about the news. They offered more details, and also hinted at where the marketplace is going from here.

The Apps Marketplace is an online store for outside companies to sell applications that integrate with Google Apps, the search giant’s bundle of office apps including Gmail and Google Docs. Thanks to protocols like OAuth and OpenID, as well as application programming interfaces (APIs) built by Google, users can log into third party apps through Google, the apps can be accessed from the same menu as Google’s, and data can be pushed back-and-forth.

Apps Marketplace Product Manager Chris Vander Mey told me the marketplace is basically a replacement and expansion of the Google Solutions Marketplace, a store for business apps that “complement” Google’s. As described above, apps in the new marketplace are much more closely integrated with Google’s. The company will also be launching its own flexible payment platform later this year (and taking a 20 percent revenue share) so you don’t even have to handle the billing.

Vander Mey also mentioned an upcoming feature showing even deeper integration — a “contextual gadget” in Gmail. Normal Gmail users should already be familiar in this, where YouTube videos linked to in messages also show up as widgets in your emails. Apps in the marketplace will be able to integrate in the same way, Vander Mey said. For example, a company called Appirio has built tool that allows users to bring up Salesforce sales lead information right in their emails.

After I heard about the launch, I was particularly curious about how involved Google will be in managing the marketplace. Vander Mey said it’s supposed to be an open marketplace — there will be a basic screening process (for which Google charges a one-time $100 fee), but Google is also counting on things like ratings and reviews to help users find the best apps.

“Our role provide is to provide the right functionality for developers to build on Google Apps,” he said.

One example of a marketplace partner is Expensify, a startup that wants to improve the expense report process. Chief executive David Barrett said Expensify was already part of the old Solutions Marketplace, but didn’t find many customers that way because there was no meaningful integration. That’s going to change, he said, since users can now access Expensify from within their Google Apps accounts. Barrett also contrasted Expensify’s integration with Google with its presence in the app stores run by Intuit and Salesforce.com.

“We’re hoping that with Google Marketplace, instead of talking to accountants, we’re talking to IT staff itself,” he said.

Companies: Expensify, Google