This week Google Chairman Eric Schmidt held a speech at LeWeb in Paris and made some rather interesting comments about his vision concerning the future of Android and the iPhone. He certainly managed to spike an interest when he casually commented that “Android is ahead of the iPhone now” in front of the audience packed with tech entrepreneurs.
After a short pause, he went on to explain. You see, he feels Google offers a more open experience to users and application developers as well. Apple on the other hand has been known to refuse access to some applications in the AppStore. That’s what it’s ultimately all about – vendors are driven by volume and volume will be possible if there’s an open approach to things.
Granted but, how can we explain the fact that a multitude of apps are available for the iOS and not to the Android? Like for example Hello, the funny tracking app or more recently the Flipboard, a news reader for the iPad, that will be expanding to the iPhone but not to Android.
Nevertheless Schmidt retains his optimism and thinks that people are getting a taste for Android and its fancier operating system Android 4.0. or better known Ice Cream Sandwich. It doesn’t even matter that you don’t like Android, you will support that platform, seems to be the motto now. When attacked by a grumpy Android user that was fed up by seeing every new Android app being put down by iOS ones, Schmidt calmly replied that his prediction is that in six months things will be very different.
Maybe his biggest argument was the fact that in total there are about 200 million Android phones in use at the moment with 550,000 new activated each day. Also, he claimed, Android was even founded before the iPhone.
