Ali vs. Frazier. Stones vs. Beatles. Brady vs. Manning. Is there anything better than competition between two rivals at the top of their games? Google chairman Eric Schmidt doesn’t seem to think so, which is why he tells Bloomberg TV’s Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle that the “brutal” competition we’re seeing right now is absolutely great for smartphone owners.
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“I would say that this brutal competition between Apple and Google over Android and iOS has enormous benefits for consumers worldwide,” Schmidt explains. “If you look at the innovation on the Apple side and on the Google side, that competition which I think is the defining fight of the computer industry, it benefits global at the billions of people level.”
There’s no doubt Schmidt makes a compelling case — as we’ve seen over the past couple of years, Apple and Google have both made moves to incorporate one another’s strengths as a way to patch up their weaknesses. So for instance, we’ve seen Google do a lot of work to make Android less fragmented and to make it less laggy, while we’ve also seen Apple take steps to make iOS a little more open, such as its decision to allow for third-party keyboards and its decision to build iPhones that come in multiple different sizes instead of one uniform size.
Schmidt went on to elaborate that competition isn’t just brutal between Apple and Google but between Android vendors themselves. Nonetheless, he says the benefits to consumers of this competition are off the charts.
“In China there are phones that are $100 retail phones unsubsidized,” he says. “In India there are $70 retail unsubsidized phones. Think of the impact on humanity, because those phones are – they’re entertainment. They’re education. They’re safety. They’re a window on the world.”
Be sure to watch the whole interview by clicking the source link below.
