Google and Apple, while aren’t on the best of terms when it comes to mobile with Android and iOS, do work together on some products and services and according to Eric Schmidt, they talk all the time about a bunch of different things.
Obviously, Google has a pretty solid stance in regards to patents. In a nutshell, what Apple is claiming they have patents to were actually shown off in prior art well before them getting their patents approved. It’s a mess in general, but Eric made it very clear that they’ve found there to be prior art and left it at that. He also went on to talk about Apple’s attempts to block Android phones from the marketplace:
“I think one of the worst things that happened in the last few years has been the belief that somehow there are so many patents in the mobile phone world, an estimated 200,000 patent that are overlapping and complicated and so forth, that one vendor can stop the sale of another vendor’s phones or devices.”
Currently, Schmidt is in Asia and was most notably there for the Korean launch of the Nexus 7 tablet. While also planning to meet with strategic allies like Samsung, he remarked on how impressive it is to see smartphone growth and use increase so drastically there.