This is a fair question. I should explain myself. I don't work for Apple. I am CEO and founder of my own tech company. We have an app up in the App Store, and are working on an Android version now. We also develop our own hardware devices with an emphasis on streaming video. Our latest device is using Android. I find myself drawn into debate where I see someone take what I feel is an extremist position, which is how we got engaged tonight. I will try to avoid this as much as possible in the future as it is bad for the forum. I am on this forum, because I feel I need to understand the Android community better.
I admit I have an Apple bias, which is going to make me unpopular here. This bias comes from my own position of having many years of experience in developing mobile devices. This drives a tremendous respect for what Apple did with the first iphone. Unless you have sweated out the pain of creating a new product entirely from scratch, you cannot possible know how hard and expensive it is. I feel that what was accomplished with that first device changed the world, and we are all better for it.
The following is going to get me in huge trouble, but I have a huge distaste for how Google treated Apple many years back, and my bias shows. Because I have had similar things happen to me in my companies. Eric Schmidt sat on Apples board and abused that position, and turned on a Google effort to knock off the iphone. People here will not agree with this, but any unbiased reading of history shows that this fact is not disputable. So I see disrespect in Google's treatment of the intellectual property of others.
As someone whose company lives and dies as a result of innovation and IP creation I just find this offensive. And it bothers me that most of the world cheers on when companies have their IP abused if it means they get something cheaper. That is a recipe for convincing businesses that they should not take the risk and innovate.
I don't think the creation of incremental software features and sticking larger screens on a product is innovation. And for the most part I feel that is what Google and Samsung do with their mobility efforts. With that said, I acknowledge that Google is now pushing the industry ahead with some of its efforts. I am going to reduce my posts and participation here, because I know that these opinions go against the grain of most members here. But given all these pro-Apple posts I have been making, I feel that I owe the people here an explanation.
One last thing. The whole concept of market share in phones is hugely misleading. You have to apply segmentation analysis for it to make any sense. Apple only competes in one segment, and that is the high end. Android has gained a lot more share at the low end, where it has obliterated Symbian. So to attack Apple's strategy due to perceived market share setbacks is off base in my view. No one else sells 10M phones in three days.