14 DAY TRIAL // During a surprise drop-in at the FY 2010 Q4 earnings call yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs felt it was appropriate to set the record straight on a number of matters regarding competition, including stuff like where iOS stands compared to Android, how developers are mostly not satisfied developing for the latter, and so on.
Among many intriguing assertions, Apple’s CEO stated yesterday that “Google loves to characterize Android as open, and iOS and iPhone as closed. We find this a bit disingenuous and clouding the real difference between our two approaches,” he said.
While many are inclined to believe every word coming out of Steve Jobs’ mouth, not everyone agrees that Android, for example, is not open.
In fact, the very father of the platform, Andy Rubin, decided to issue a personal response to Steve Jobs’ allegations in a way only he could.
“‘the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make’,” he wrote via Twitter.
What Rubin means to say by this, according to Neowin, is that, with a single line of code, you can download and compile the latest version of Android to use as you please.
That’s how open Android is, Rubin tries to emphasize.
Responding to Jobs’ allegations that Android is a fragmented mess, for both consumers and developers, TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth used Twitter to note the following:
“Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t.”
Replying to a tweet by Danny Sullivan, the editor of SearchEngineLand.com, covering Google, SEO, PPC and all aspects of search engines and search marketing, Dodsworth added:
“yes exactly! We only have 2 guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is."
Steve Jobs also took on Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the Blackberry line of smartphones, saying…:
“We sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter which represents a 91% unit growth over the year-ago quarter and was well ahead of IDC’s latest published estimate of 64% growth for the global smartphone market in the September quarter.”
“And it handily beat RIM’s 12.1 million Blackberry’s sold in their most recent quarter ending in August. We’ve now passed RIM, and I don’t seem them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. They must move beyond their area of strength and comfort into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company.”
Jobs also said that 7-inch tablets will not be a hit, whereas several companies, including RIM themselves, are gearing up to introduce exactly that.
After seeing what Jobs had to say regarding RIM's figures and their business model, RIM's Co-CEO Jim Balsillie could not refrain himself from expressing his belief that "customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple."
The statement in question, courtesy of Neowin, can be found below:
"For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that 7" tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience.
We also know that while Apple's attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash.
We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 - 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter.
Apple's preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM's August-ending quarter doesn't tell the whole story because it doesn't take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple's Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders.
As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story."
Softpedia note
To be noted that Apple’s CEO is at his second strike this year, as far as upsetting competition goes, following the iPhone 4 Antennagate fiasco.
Following Apple's attempt to prove that competitors’ handsets were also suffering from what is known as “antenna attenuation”, the likes of Nokia, RIM, and Samsung fired back to claim their products did not have reception issues.
History is repeating itself, only this time, Apple is being answered back with much stronger, elaborated arguments.