Steve Jobs vs. Android : Apple CEO Says Google's Mobile OS is Very Fragmented

Last Tuesday, Apple publicly disclosed their Q4 earnings marked with record results.



During the supposedly boring presentation, Steve Jobs hopped in and delivered a rather unsolicited monologue slamming RIM, Google and Android and praising App Store.

Listen to his epic Android tirade --



Quoting Jobs,

"There's no way to know how many Android phones are shipping each quarter [...]

Google loves to characterize Android as open and iOS and iPhone as closed. We find that a bit disingenuous and clouding the difference between our approaches. Unlike Windows, where most PCs have the same user interface and run the same apps. Many Android OEMs including the two largest, HTC and Motorola, install (custom) user interfaces to differentiate themselves...Compare this with iPhone, where every handset looks the same. [...]

We think the 'open' versus 'closed' argument is a smokescreen for what's really best for the customers. We think Android is very, very fragmented and becomes more so every day. We think this is a huge strength of our approach when compared to Google's. We think integrated will trump fragmented every time.

Twitter client (TweetDeck) reported that (in making an Android app) they had to contend with more than 100 different versions of Android software on 244 different handsets. The multiple hardware and software iterations presents developers with a daunting challenge."

So it's either Steve Jobs truly believes that Android is a genuine abomination that needs to be crushed before it causes more harm or he's finally going on a defensive. Whatever the real score is, I think the speech is a little weird.