In an interview published mere hours before Apple’s chief rival is expected to reveal its new flagship handset, Apple marketing head Phil Schiller took potshots at Android, and Samsung in particular, saying that the Galaxy S IV will ship with “an OS that is nearly a year old.”
Schiller blasted Android and Samsung in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday. He focused on fragmentation in Android, which sees most of the OS’s users relying on older software.
“With [Google’s] own data,” Shiller said, “only 16 percent of Android users are on year-old version of the operating system. Over 50 percent are still on software that is two years old. A really big difference.”
Schiller was referring to the most recent report on the installed base of the Android OS. The report showed 16.5% of users running Android 4.1 or 4.2, 28.6% running Android 4.0, and 43.9% running Android 2.3.
Schiller also pointed out that Samsung’s Galaxy S IV, expected to debut on Thursday, will likely be running Android 4.1.
“And that extends to the news we are hearing this week that the Samsung Galaxy S IV is being rumored to ship with an OS that is nearly a year old,” said Schiller. “Customers will have to wait to get an update.”
Schiller’s interview was the second one with the media in one day, he also spoke with The Wall Street Journal in an interview that basically hit the same points, although he did not specifically mention Samsung in the earlier interview.
Schiller has been seen as taking it to Android in recent times, as he took to Twitter last week to point out the study that showed a spike in malware on the Google OS. That study also showed iOS malware was at a comparatively small level.
