Apple vs. Google: Are They Really At War?
“This article is mostly meant to be educational while informing you of the fundamental differences I’ve noticed between Apple and Google. I’ll discuss both company agendas, highlight how Google is solving real-world problems, and possibly help you look at things from a different perspective as well.”
Worldwide Appeal
I’m sure you’re all quite aware of the fact that Android and iOS are the two most dominant mobile operating systems around. Android even recently surpassed Windows regarding the total number of users, making it the most popular operating system globally.
It has taken many years, but the dramatic shift from a desktop-driven environment to a mobile-based one was something we didn’t expect to happen so abruptly. Timing and excellent business practices on both Apple’s and Google’s part helped the mobile industry to explode at a very rapid pace in a short amount of time.
Speaking of which, let’s talk specifically about Apple for a second — they are one of the most successful tech companies in the world and won’t be going anywhere either. According to a GlobalStats chart, iOS currently (as of this writing) claims around 56% of the United States mobile market share, making it a pretty sizeable market lead for Apple.
It appears to have increased by a few percentage points from last year — primarily thanks to the successful launch of the iPhone 8. They sold somewhere around 46.7 million units in the final quarter of 2017!
The U.S. is undoubtedly Apple’s single most valuable market, which means they’ll be trying their best to hang onto those numbers as long as possible. In terms of overall worldwide market share — Android has a significant lead over iOS (About 74% vs. 21%). How did Google do it? With a lot of time, dedication, customer appeal, and a clear game plan. I’ll cover more on Google in the sections below.
Apple’s Point of View
When you hear the Apple name, you likely think about the premium products and services they offer to their customers. It took decades of hard work and persistence to associate the Apple brand name with the premium experience we know today. Apple is also well known for keeping its operating systems locked down to maintain a smooth and well-restricted ecosystem for its users.
Doing so gives them constant control over how users interact with their platforms, providing an overall better experience for many. For example, system updates are always incredibly consistent across multiple generations of iPhones as far back as five-year-old devices. In addition, Apple customer service also gets much praise for being some of the best out there for various reasons.
For example, one company that makes all device models is much easier to maintain than having multiple manufacturers with multiple models. As you can imagine, having a limited number of devices allows Apple’s customer service to give the best support they possibly can to each device. This is an area that Apple has excelled at for some time now — it’s another big part of the Apple experience.
Now when we’re talking about running a closed ecosystem — yes, this means a lot of good things for the consumer; however, there’s also a significant trade-off that comes with it. In the particular case of Apple’s closed ecosystem, you have to follow the “Apple’s way or no way” motto regarding user freedom.
What does that mean, you might be thinking? Well, if Apple doesn’t want you to do something, they have every right to restrict your access to all settings and services as they please. It may be “your” device that you paid for, but you’re ultimately at the mercy of what Apple allows you to do with it in the long run.
They are in control of your devices, not you — that’s the price you pay for getting involved in the Apple ecosystem. As long as you don’t mind playing by their rules, the user experience will be pleasant for the most part. Everything works, the devices are highly optimized, and the operating system is easy to navigate — that’s the Apple way! All of this is what makes Apple so successful.
Google’s Point of View
Google started its long journey by rocking our world as the number one search engine in the late 1990s. We were all searching for and looking up anything and everything we could on the internet. Back in the good old days of dial-up modems!
Here we are decades later — Google is still the number one place to search for everything online. That’s something we knew wouldn’t ever change in a million years, though. If you ask someone to look something up online right now, what might you say? You’d likely tell them to “Google it,” right? Thanks to Google’s intelligent decisions early on, this has become a part of our daily lives now.
They’ve also taken the same concept of the Google search engine and applied it to searching for videos online. YouTube is the world’s most extensive collection of videos online. Not only is YouTube a search engine specializing in video, but it has become a platform for creators. Millions of videos get uploaded to YouTube every week while racking up billions of views across all combined videos.
Now back to the “Google it” example from earlier that we still use today — what do we tell someone to do when we want them to look up videos online? “Check out this video on YouTube.” Another score for Google — we now also associate video with their company name. Google was wise to snap up YouTube in the mid-2000s — they shaped it into a worldwide powerhouse for videos, rivaled by no one.
As you can probably tell by the brief history of Google, they know how to make a stellar software experience. Google is so good at what they do in the software game that others can’t seem to replicate that success, no matter how hard they try. Google has come a long way since the early days— from a search engine to a now successful hardware division, they’ve got a lot going on lately.
Google started experimenting with its own devices under the Nexus program years ago. They didn’t create these devices but instead partnered with different manufacturers each year. However, as of late 2016, they evolved that idea into their official Pixel hardware line. The idea of “Made by Google” hardware was intriguing because Google was a software company that excelled at software experiences.
Thanks to the Pixel business deal between Google and HTC, Google could design, develop, and build everything independently without input from a third-party manufacturer. That means we will be getting the absolute best Android experience possible through Google’s very own vision with the Pixel hardware and software features.
Since Google was a software-only company initially, having an official hardware line was out of the question until the HTC business deal came along. This propelled Google full force into the hardware market, which gave them a good start for Pixel. Google still has a lot to learn with the hardware division since they’re just starting this new journey, but they get better with every passing year.
The massive empire that Apple built up over the past few decades with their hardware division — Google is working on accomplishing a similar presence in half the time. No small feat! I know Google will one day take its hardware division above and beyond what we thought was possible. Their software experience is unrivaled, so it’s only a matter of time until their hardware strength can match that.
The purpose of Android is to give its users freedom, flexibility, and the power of choice over their devices. That choice means the users have much more authority over their devices rather than being controlled by a company. Google provides the core operating system and allows any hardware manufacturer to make their own user experience from that code — that’s the true power of open source.
It’s the perfect game plan since it creates more choice for the consumer! Trying to make one or two devices that fit every person’s needs is nearly impossible to accomplish for any company. There will always be some people who don’t want what’s on offer. The good news — there are dozens of Android smartphone manufacturers with thousands of devices from every single price point and screen size.
Who’s At War?
The only war, it seems, is that of the platform users themselves — the fans are causing all the stir when it comes to the arguments on whose platform is superior. Which platform is “better” is subjective because it depends on what each user wants from a device. Price, features, camera, screen size, ease of use — these are all important individually and make up the overall bigger picture.
Remember — what works for some people might not be appealing to others. Both Android and iOS have their strengths and weakness alike, just as you would expect from open vs. closed source ecosystems. There is no right or wrong answer, so don’t let others boss you around or bully you when making your next smartphone purchase! Go with what works best for you, and only you — that’s what matters.
I’m not saying that Google and Apple are oblivious to one another since they’re in competitive fields; however, they aren’t active enemies either. Sure, there will always be the competition factor to consider between them, but that’s only a tiny fraction of the story. In reality, they each have their own company agendas they’re working on independently regardless of what the other one is doing.
This is so crucial to understanding what makes Apple and Google so different from one another. I feel like the company agenda thing is something that most people don’t understand or overlook because of pointless flame wars about whose platform is the “superior” one. Both companies may have a few products in the same market; however, they approach technology from two entirely different viewpoints.
In other words, there are some similarities between them, but there are far more differences that are incomparable. Apple sets out to do one thing while Google sets out to do another thing. Sometimes these things might overlap to an extent; however, they’re both in their own worlds working on their own company agendas — not trying to sabotage each other as the community would have you believe.
So how exactly does Apple differ from Google, you might be asking? What are a few things that stand out for each company? I’ll go over a few key points that should help you better understand my viewpoint of the two companies and why they are so wildly different from one another.
How Apple Differs From Google
If there’s something that Apple can do better than anyone right now, it would be selling hardware by the millions. They’ve been doing this since day one, with no one else being able to come close to those numbers. As mentioned earlier, that premium Apple experience has been unrivaled even today. Apple wants to offer you a comfy ecosystem that’s easy to use and works well with all of its devices.
As of this writing, it seems Apple is primarily focused on selling you new hardware rather than solving some of the tech problems we face in the real world. Sure, they will update a five-year-old iPhone with the latest version of iOS; however, that’s not what makes up their company agenda at this time. They thrive from the dozens of millions of new expensive devices they sell every single year.
As such, Apple also lives in the now — they don’t look too far into the future and want to sell the best user experience possible during the present time. Apple’s game plan is to constantly sell new devices to those who upgrade their devices yearly. From there, they quickly move on to designing the next new device to sell them for the next year — it’s a vicious cycle, but it works for Apple.
None of this is a bad thing, though! We live in the present time, so why not provide for the current generation rather than the future ones? No one knows what the future might hold — I think it’s a solid decision on Apple’s part to adapt to the trends with each new year. It has worked for them for this long — that’s how they’ve always done business, and no one will tell them otherwise.
One key thing that I expect to change from Apple in the future is their sole reliance on pushing expensive yearly hardware upgrades. They know they can sell 100+ million iPhones worldwide without issue for now — but it might not work for that much longer. With Google’s AI and machine learning dominance on their Pixel hardware, iPhone users might eventually feel like they’re getting a lesser device.
Although Google and Apple aren’t directly competing in the AI and machine learning space, Apple is starting to show more interest in bringing such features to its users. They’ve already introduced some of these AI features to their camera system, which helps make their hardware even better. Apple may not have the same company agenda as Google regarding AI, but we’ll undoubtedly see more of it!
How Google Differs From Apple
Many companies are more worried about how they can help themselves rather than helping others, which is unfortunate. When you look at the big picture, Google is doing more real-world problem solving than just about any other tech company as a whole. Yes, they’ve had many bumps along the way regarding user privacy, but so does every other big tech company in the world — it’s a tricky situation.
For these technologies to be effective, personal, and inclusive, we need at least some data input to make things work a certain way. Google gets a lot of flak for data harvesting from their users and their search engine, but it’s required in some form to advance their company agenda. They use this data to make user experiences and platforms that no one else but Google could ever accomplish.
It’s true that Google still relies heavily on its ad network to data-mine the users while also being a significant revenue source for them. Most people know they have to give up some data to a tech company, but they likely disapprove of what’s taken from them and how much. Perhaps Google can figure out how to advance their company agenda while being more user-friendly about privacy concerns.
Power becomes an issue since Google dominates the ad space, the search engine department, online videos, maps, and the worldwide smartphone market with Android. Add those with all the other new things Google’s doing, and you’ve yourself one gigantic monopoly. That’s a lot of responsibilities and power for one company to handle alone — which is why Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was created.
Breaking up the company into smaller entities allows for more focus on critical user-facing issues and product innovation. It also eases people’s minds who didn’t like the monopoly that Google amassed over the years. Google still has many of the same original core companies under its belt, though. At the same time, at least all the newer ventures have been separated into their own companies.
Alphabet has many different divisions catering to many crowds — with more companies being added over time. Did you know that Alphabet used its Project Loon LTE balloons to bring internet service to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit the area? The entire island was without power or cell service. However, thanks to these balloons, they could still keep in contact during this weather emergency.
And believe it or not, some areas of the world don’t have the luxury of such technology that the rest of us use daily. These technologies have become so ubiquitous that I don’t think many people realize how lucky they are to have them. Google now offers a program called “Android Go” that allows underserved countries to use smartphones for the first time — they are slowly connecting the world.
Android Go devices are very lightweight on specs, highly optimized, and super affordable, helping to bring more of these underserved communities across the globe into the world of mobile. With every new year of major Android version updates, there’s an Android Go equivalent to match it. That’s great news because these devices will stay up to date just like the full main version of Android!
Google has also been pushing its AI and machine learning technologies forward since they officially began their Pixel smartphone business. For example, the Pixel 2 camera can continually improve over time by Google working on the AI algorithms that power it. That means the already fantastic camera on the Pixel 2 can keep getting new features without the user needing to purchase a new device.
Current Limitations, New Skills
Whether you know it or not, there is an actual physical limit to how far we can push our current hardware. Google knows this and has been making the necessary changes to drive the industry forward. For a few years now, they’ve been utilizing their cloud and AI-powered services to achieve this. Google Assistant is one example of this already being set in motion as a part of their company agenda.
Google strives to find new ways to improve our personal lives by bringing us new ideas and concepts from the future. There will always be a need for technology to help solve our actual real-world issues. For example, the language barrier is still one of the most challenging obstacles we as humans face today, with hundreds of different languages being spoken all across the globe. What’s one to do?
Google has slowly helped bridge this gap by using their AI and machine learning algorithms combined with their Google Translate service. Google Assistant has the power to tap into this kind of language translation service on the fly as well. We can now carry out real-time conversations with almost anyone, regardless of their native language — and it’ll continue to get more accurate over time.
More Updates Less Upgrades
The yearly hardware upgrades that we are so accustomed to could potentially become less relevant soon enough. Not needing to upgrade our devices so often while still gaining new features would be quite an enticing possibility going forward.
Treating the smartphone more as a service and less as a piece of hardware might be the way forward for some. Why? We are slowly getting closer to hitting a physical barrier when it comes to these devices — new features and how powerful we can make them are not as dramatic as they once were.
Google pointed this out during the 2017 Google I/O keynote, which lends even more evidence to the idea of smartphones as a service sometime in the future. Starting in 2018 — we’ll begin seeing more companies introduce their own AI and machine learning apps or services as we advance onward.
The Wrap-Up
Apple and Google have two entirely different views and opinions on how they approach technology. They both have their strengths and a few significant differences, but no one is right or wrong in how they do things. They each have their own company agendas and have never been at war with one another.
Apple has a more traditional view of technology and hardware upgrades, while Google is shaking up the industry with their new age way of thinking. Google has taken on quite the challenge for themselves — they are working on being a jack of all trades with a footprint in many different categories. No other tech company is doing this, which makes what they are doing very noble.
It would be interesting to see these two tech giants work together to create a universal platform where we can all get along. Imagine a tech world where people act like civil human beings for once instead of starting childish fan wars. Talk about an interesting concept — stranger things have happened though!
However, it’s not a likely outcome since too many people have a one-track mind about certain things. Although, we never thought Nintendo would ever develop smartphone games; they certainly surprised us all when they did. The future for both Apple and Google looks very promising, and it’ll be exciting to see what they do next! Maybe they’ll give us a few surprises of their own.
