In light of Steve Jobs' recent death, a surprising amount of attention has been payed to Walter Isaacson, the author of the upcoming biography of Steve Jobs. Walter revealed that Jobs actually said to him that Android's similar iOS is as close to grand theft as you can get. Isaacson quotes that Jobs is 'willing to go thermonuclear war with this'.
You could say that Android was the biggest upset in the mobile world. Prior to Android's launch, Apple and Google enjoyed a close friendship, with Google Maps and Google Earth being a key part of the iPhone interface. However, in the fateful month of November 2007, things turned sour. Google introduced Android exactly 10 months after the launch of the iPhone. Since then, Apple refused to include quite a few of the Google apps on its appstore, forcing the company to settle for the less convenient in-browser app. Android has since take the mobile market by storm, accounting for 48% of the global smartphone market, as opposed to Apple's 19%.
But, this mammoth growth hasn't gone uncontested, there have been many proxy-battles between Apple and Android suing a number of the hardware manufacturers which have adopted it for their merchandise.
To add more to the battle-mess would be unfair, and yet Samsung are now counter-suing Apple for infringements over Wireless Transmitter patenting. The prospect of espionage also shows its ugly head. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, was on the board at Apple while he was creating his own iOS 'clone', described by critics as an 'inexcusable betrayal of Steve Jobs' trust'. After all of this, we can only say one thing... let the battle continue.
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