Android vs Apple is the defining fight: Google's Eric Schmidt

Google Inc Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt expects more than a billion mobile devices around the world to be running its Android software within a year, intensifying a battle with Apple Inc that he called a “defining fight” of the industry. He was speaking at the AllThingsD broadcast from New York. Schmidt said there were already four times as many Android mobile gadgets — smartphones and tablets made by the likes of Samsung Electronics — and that the scale of their battle was unprecedented. “We’ve not seen … competitive fights on this scale,” he said during an interview with tech blog and added that, “We’ve not seen network platform fights at this scale. The beneficiary is you all, the customer, globally. [caption id=“attachment_486954” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters[/caption] When asked about the Samsung-Apple verdict, he was cautious and said that Samsung was very upset with the judgement but chose not to comment on it. He also said that in the patent wars, Apple and Google weren’t the victims but rather smaller start-ups. On the issue of Apple Maps vs Google Maps, Schmidt once again reiterated his earlier words , saying that Apple should have kept Google Maps. He also revealed that “Apple decided a long time ago to do their own maps … [now they’ve] discovered that maps are really hard.”  Once again he refused to announce whether Google had submitted a Maps application to Apple for approval on iOS 6. With inputs from Reuters