Apple CEO Steve Jobs has often ripped Google by saying that it targeted Apple by jumping into the smartphone space with Android. Google’s Larry Page said Jobs is merely rewriting history to neatly fit into his narrative.
Speaking to reporters, Page said:
“We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet enabled and have good browsers and all that because that did not exist in the marketplace. I think that characterization of us entering after [the iPhone was introduced] is not really reasonable.”
Who’s right? Well, we know that Google purchased the company that became Android in 2005 with intentions to go into the mobile phone game. The Apple iPhone was introduced in 2007 about a year before the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, was released.
So, Google is saying that it had been planning to jump into this space for a long time, but, technically, it did go into the smartphone game after Apple. Additionally, we know that Apple has been working on its iPhone/iPad products for nearly 10 years.
It doesn’t really matter though because Microsoft could say that Apple jumped in the smartphone space after them. The bottom line is that smartphones, mobiles and connected devices are the future of computing and the major tech players have to get in this space to be relevant in the future.
This is why Hewlett-Packard (HP) spent about $1.2 billion to buy Palm, as you absolutely have to have some skin in the mobile game to be a major tech player. Hopefully, HP’s resources and scale can give Palm’s webOS the proper chance it deserves.
We’ve also seen Dell notice this mobile-centric future, as the company is prepping a lineup of killer smartphones later this year. I personally can’t wait for the Lightning but the Thunder and other devices look pretty cool, too.
