Google Offers Mobile Chrome Browser for New Android Software

(Updates with share prices in last paragraph.)

Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., seeking to get more of its desktop-computer software onto mobile devices, introduced a test version of its Chrome Web browser for the latest Android operating system.

The browser, first unveiled in 2008, will be available on tablets and mobile phones using the company’s “Ice Cream Sandwich” Android software, Sundar Pichai, a senior vice president in charge of Chrome and applications, said in a blog posting. The company aims to improve the speed of mobile browsing by preloading top search results and enabling users to get the same tabs and bookmarks they have on their desktops.

“Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices,” Pichai said. The software is “focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized Web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.”

Google’s Android software has taken the lead in the market for smartphone operating system, topping Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Microsoft Corp.’s mobile software. Android handsets accounted for 48 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in the fourth quarter, while the iPhone had 43 percent, according to NPD Group Inc. Almost three in five first-time smartphone buyers chose Android, NPD said.

Shares of Mountain View, California-based Google fell less than 1 percent to $607.06 at 1:41 p.m. in New York. The shares had declined 5.7 percent this year before today.

--Editors: Nick Turner, Stephen West

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net