Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, promoting How Google Works on Bloomberg TV Wednesday, got a little testy when asked about the customers “lined up around the block” to buy Apple’s new iPhones.
“I think Samsung had these products a year ago,” he said. Twice.
Pressed on whether it worried him that companies that adopted Android weren’t making the kind of money Apple is, Schmidt, who once sat on Apple’s board, got serious:
The fact of the matter is you can make a small market share with a lot of profits or you can make the same amount with a much larger market share and lesser profits.
“We go for volume in our strategies.
“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 the Google side, that competition — which I think is the defining fight of the computer industry today — it benefits globally at the billions of people level.”
Q: Is it as brutal as it ever was?
A: It’s more so.
For the record, Google netted $3.2 billion in the June quarter on sales of $13.1 billion. In the same quarter, Apple earned $7.7 billion on sales of $37.4 billion.
Below: The full 15-minute interview.
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