Apple's Marketing Chief Takes Pot Shots at Both Google and Samsung

Amidst the constant buzz from the Galaxy S IV, which will be announced later today on Samsung's Unpacked event at 7PM ET (4PM PT), Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller threw some shurikens this Wednesday on both Android and the upcoming Samsung flagship.

Quoting Apple's own research, he stated that four times as many iPhone users switched from an Android phone than the other way around. Schiller told Reuters that many Android users are stuck on a severely outdated software, with only 16 percent of them on a year-old version of that mobile operating system. "Over 50 percent are still on software that is two years old", he added. When it comes to the new Samsung flagship, he stated that it would not be a major surprise if even Galaxy S IV ships on an OS that is nearly a year old.

One of the issues mentioned multiple times is the fact most of the Android phones are "used as a free replacement for a feature phone". Given that there were ~480M Android phones sold in 2012 with Samsung's Galaxy S III being one of the most popular devices that sold around 30M units, it is easy to notice that major part of the Android sales actually came from the low end devices. According to the data provided by none other than Google, less than 2% of all active devices are running the latest Android 4.2.x, which was released on November 13th last year.

"At Apple we know that it's not just enough to have products pumped out in large numbers. You have to love and use them. There is a lot of data showing a big disparity there," Schiller pointed out.

As noted by Reuters, Schiller's remarks came on the same day Android architect Andy Rubin stepped down (Google Chrome chief Sundar Pichai replacing him), and in recent months analysts and shareholders have not been exactly pleased with the market share performance of the company from Cupertino. Apple Inc. stock went as low as $419 at the very beginning of March — its weakest point since January 2012. Regardless, Apple still remains the most valuable tech company today, with some 137 billion USD in cash. However, the threat, which Samsung and Google present in the long-term apparently cannot be ignored anymore.