Competition between Apple and Google is fierce than ever by Eric Schmidt

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and former
SVP of products, Jonathan Rosenberg, recently
published a new book entitled "How Google Works,
which explores topics like corporate culture, strategy,
talent, innovation, dealing with disruption, and more.
The duo have done an interview with Bloomberg to
promote the title, with Schmidt commenting on the
state of affairs between iOS and Google and Apple's
new larger-screened iPhones.
According to Schmidt, competition between Apple
and Google is more brutal than ever before, with
"enormous, enormous racing" going on between the
two companies, which ultimately has "enormous
benefits for consumers worldwide."
In fact I would say that this brutal competition
between Apple and Google over Android and iOS
has enormous benefits for consumers
worldwide. 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.
When questioned about how he feels driving past an
Apple Store and seeing people lined up around the
block to purchase an iPhone, Schmidt said "I'll tell
you what I think. Samsung had these products a year
ago." The interviewer further notes that nobody "had a
huge party" and Schmidt reiterated that Samsung had
larger phones first once again. "I think Samsung had
the products a year ago. That's what I think."
Re/code has also published a short excerpt from
"How Google Works," where Schmidt writes about a
meeting he had with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in
2010. During the meeting, Jobs made it clear that he
believed Android was based on Apple's intellectual
property, and Schmidt worried that a dispute was
brewing.
The two had sat outside at the California-
cuisine-oriented cafe, discussing Google's
growing mobile operating system, Android.
Steve was convinced that the open-source
operating system was built on intellectual
property created by Apple. Eric responded that
we hadn't used Apple's IP and had in fact built
Android on our own. But his argument was to
no avail. "They are going to fight us," he
thought.
The excerpt goes on to detail the friendship between
Jobs and Schmidt and the release of the iPhone in
2007, which led to Schmidt stepping down from
Apple's board due to the similarities between iOS and
Android. It also covers the differences between
Apple's closed system compared to Google's open
system, and why both methods work.
Apple's control model works not just because of
Steve Jobs's excellence, but also because of
how he organized the company. At Apple — just
like Google — the leaders are product people
with technical backgrounds. When you build a
team of great, smart creatives, and put the
world’s uber-smart creative in charge, then you
have a good chance of being right most of the
time. And when you are right most of the time,
then a highly controlled model can yield
tremendous innovation.