Steve Jobs hits out at Android

While Google’s executives have recently been attacking Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Windows Phone platforms, Apple supremo Steve Jobs has now stepped in to hammer Google’s Android operating system.

While not attacking the OS specifically he’s been hugely critical of the tablets onto which manufacturers are dropping it, saying that 7″ screens are simply too small for a tablet.

Commenting on avalanche of tablets heading to market. Just a handful of credible entrants. Almost all use 7″ screen, compared to iPad at nearly 10″ screen. 7″ screen is only 45% as large as iPad’s screen. Hold an iPad in portrait view and draw a horizontal line halfway down. What’s left is a 7″ screen…too small. There are clear limits to how close elements can be on the screen before users can’t touch accurately. We believe 10-inch screen is minimum necessary.

This comes on the day that Apple announced their financial results for Q3 2010 with revenue of $20.34bn and a quarterly profit of $4.31bn which is up significantly on the quarterly profit of $2.53bn for the same period last year.

In this quarter Apple have shipped 3.89 million Mac and iMac computers, demonstrating that they’re still clearly a strong player in the market.  Their expected announcement of the OS X Lion desktop operating system will certainly help solidify this position for 2011 and 2012.

With the iPad still selling well, Jobs is clearly not worried about the Android tablets coming up to challenge it and he’s got a point.  Many people see Android as being too ‘desktop’ for either a tablet or a smartphone, with many people waiting for WebOS or a Blackberry OS tablet.

Jobs also had a thing or two to say about Blackberry maker, Research in Motion too though saying he didn’t see their tablets “catching up in the foreseeable future”.

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Author: Mike Halsey MVP, Tuesday October 19, 2010 -
Tags:android, apple, Google, quarterly results, research in motion, rim, steve jobs, tablet

Responses so far:

1. DanTe says:

   October 19, 2010 at 3:46 pm

   humpf… This is news to me. I don’t know anyone waiting for WebOS or Blackberry OS. They’re all scrambling to jump onto the Android OS. And based on past, present and most likely future experiences, no one who is not an artist (pronounced autist) is stupid enough to jump on the Apple OS.

   Let’s take a poll as to which OS the readers are jumping onto.

   (I personally would still like to see a Windows desktop like OS for a tablet. Solves a lot of compatibility issues.)

   Reply
   • ReX says:

     October 20, 2010 at 5:35 pm

     Windows XP Tablet PC Edition?

     Reply