We’ve all heard it before. But there was a report that the late Steve Jobs (Apple’s former CEO and Co-Founder) was “competitive enough to claim that he was willing to ‘go to thermonuclear war’ on Android.” Which is pretty evident by Apple beginning to sue everyone, and iOS 5 “borrowing” a ton of Android features, like notification center. So in a recent interview with Wired, Larry Page was asked about that so-called Thermonuclear war on Android. Page had a simple response:
“How well is that working?”
That response was so simple, yet awesome and completely truthful. Wired then followed up that question by asking whether he thought that “Android’s huge lead in market share is decisive” in the battle between Google and Apple. Page responded:
“Android has been very successful, and we’re very excited about it.”
Apple has had some success of suing Android manufacturers in the past, that may not work well in the future. And it, more importantly hasn’t stopped Android’s rise. If anything it’s helped Android rise more quickly. After the Apple v. Samsung lawsuit last summer, which Apple won, Samsung turned around and sold a ton of Galaxy S3 devices. Showing that some lawsuit isn’t going to slow them down. In 2012, the top selling devices were the Galaxy S3 and the Nexus 7, and for good reason.
Now to put all this in perspective, the Wired also asked in their interview if Larry Page and Google had envisioned this kind of success with Android when they bought Andy Rubin’s company in 2005:
We have a good ability to see what’s possible and not be impeded by the status quo. At the time we bought Android, it was pretty obvious that the existing mobile operating systems were terrible. You couldn’t write software for them. Compare that to what we have now. So I don’t think that betting on Android was that big a stretch. You just had to have the conviction to make a long-term investment and to believe that things could be a lot better.
It’s actually pretty amazing to see where Android has come from when Google purchased it in 2005, to what it is today in 2013. Imagine upgrading from the T-Mobile G1 to the Galaxy S3, or even the Nexus 4. That’s quite an upgrade. Now look at the iPhone. Imagine upgrading from the original iPhone to the iPhone 5. Not much of an upgrade, sure you gain half an inch of screen and a better camera, but that’s about it. So it looks like Page was right about mobile operating systems being complicated and terrible back then, and most of them are still terrible.
Source: Wired