Google's chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt has said that the company's Android OS is 'clearly winning' the mobile platform battle with Microsoft and Apple.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Schmidt said that customers are activating more than 1.3 million Android devices a day. Gartner recently revealed that Android's market share had increased to more than 72 per cent in the third quarter of 2012, compared with Apple's 14 per cent. That's about double the amount of Google Android sales from the same quarter of 2011.
"This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago – Microsoft versus Apple," Schmidt said. "We're winning that pretty clearly now."
During the interview, Schmidt also addressed the recent accusations about tax avoidance. He said: "We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways. I am very proud of the structure we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate."
This year, Amazon and Google have been criticised for making substantial sales in the UK, but only paying a small amount of tax to the Treasury – as little as 1.5 per cent on hundreds of millions of pounds in some instances.
Schmidt also said that he sees the company's Google+ social networking service as a "viable competitor to Facebook."
Google today released its Google Maps app for iOS on Apple's App Store, much to the delight of iOS 6 users who were left disappointed by Apple's Maps offering, which was so flawed that CEO Tim Cook had to issue a public apology for the disaster.
See also:
Google: 'Our iOS Maps app is better than Google Maps for Android'
Samsung ad mocking Apple fans most popular tech vid of 2012
Guy Kawaski, former Apple Evangelist says "Android is better"
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Comments received
stefn said on Thu, 13 Dec 2012
Platforms control their own destiny. Google gave control away with Android so it could sell ads everywhere. Android, like Linux, can be used to build a platform: Amazon is an android based platform. Samsung will be a android based platform, once it buys Sony :). Sorry, Eric, Google isn't a platform just because you say it is. It's an ad firm. Get used to it.
PostScript said on Thu, 13 Dec 2012
Sorry Eric but you have to have a better product to win.
marcandsebe said on Thu, 13 Dec 2012
Apple are only one company that make high quality devices. Google developed the OS and many companies make the phones with Android OS on them. Some of these phones are utter rubbish, but if so many of these are sold cheaply, it's no wonder they are outselling Apple.
Baskaran said on Fri, 14 Dec 2012
Google sells advertisements (of course with free junk). Apple sells the pleasant experience. Which is better? Depends on the individual and affordability.
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