Google, Android to be year's top story, survey finds: Chetan Sharma Consulting annual survey comments on global trends

Google Inc. (GOOG) and its Android operating system will be the biggest story of 2011, with more than 50% of survey respondents picking it as top story, according to Chetan Sharma Consulting’s annual survey of wireless industry executives. Fourth-generation network rollouts and the ensuing marketing battles as well as the continued rollouts of mobile data throughout the world came in next, respectively, with both choices garnering around 40% of the votes.
Rounding out the top 10 were: Apple tablets and the iPhone (30%-plus); security and privacy (20%); the Facebook mobile platform (just under 20%); network overloading and collapse (15%); others (12%); operator and/or original equipment manufacturers merger and acquisition activity and policy and regulation, both which came in under 10%.
About 53% of respondents believe the iPhone will launch at Verizon Wireless (VZ) in the first quarter, with another 30% saying Q2. Tiered pricing won top spot for the solution that would best manage mobile broadband consumption.
Google Inc. will continue to be the most open player in the ecosystem, with nearly 70% of respondents picking it. Google also got top spot when asked which company will make the biggest mobile acquisition in 2011.
India, China and the United States are the biggest infrastructure opportunities going forward, in that order. And at the policy level, the Federal Communications Commission’s recent adoption of network neutrality rules will have the greatest impact on the industry this year.
Microsoft Corp. got 30% of the votes in the category of “comeback kid” in the mobile space (followed by none of the above at 20%.) Nokia took third place with more than 15% of the votes.
In the person of the year category, Steve Jobs took, first followed by a group of Angry Birds.
Other predictions include tablets as breakout new device of the year; the enterprise will drive the mobile cloud adoption and the financial companies will lead the mobile payments/mobile commerce space. Interestingly, mobile payments also garnered top spot as the breakout category of the year.