Android vs iPad
There’s a good chance that you either have a tablet – one of those computing devices that’s larger than a cell phone but much smaller than the laptop – or you thought about buying one. And when you look at the shelves, you have many options. Apple’s iPad has 80 percent of the market right now, but there’s also Samsung and Motorola, RIM, HTC and many more.
Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says this isn’t just a brand war. It’s a war of ideas and a war for the future.
Schmidt has more than a bit of a bias with Google’s products but his insights into the future of technology are nonetheless absolutely fascinating. Here’s a transcript of my interview with him:
ZAKARIA: You have Apple coming out with this extremely elegant iPad that everyone’s in love with. But it requires that you follow Apple’s rules and all the restrictions that it places. No Flash and no Windows being the most prominent. And now you have Android providing a kind of open platform. Obviously, as the head of Google you’re going to tell me Android is going to win. But tell me something about this contest.
SCHMIDT: It’s a classic contest in high-tech. And in that contest, you have a very well-run, very focused, closed competitor who builds a great product that does something that’s very useful. That will be Apple.
You have another competitor who makes all the technology available to everybody else and using creativity and various partnerships and so forth gets the benefit of everyone else’s creativity.
Because there are more people involved in the open side of that – that side will eventually get more volume, have more investment, therefore have more creativity and more innovation. Ultimately, the end user will choose the open one over the closed one.
ZAKARIA: Except right now all these tablets that are Android based are, let’s be honest, not as good as the iPad and they’re more expensive, which strikes me as unusual.
SCHMIDT: But which approach will produce a lower product quicker? One manufacturer for a product or many manufacturers competing? The fact of the matter is we’re just at the beginning of this fight. And the fight between two very well-run, very large, very significant ecosystem companies will ultimately produce great value to consumers because the fight between them will keep prices low, keep the systems honest and open and encourage the kind of investment that people want to see.
One of the greatest things about this contest is that the people who win in this are the consumers.
Read the whole article at Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square here…
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