Google Replies To Steve Jobs’ Activation Accusations

Let the wars between Apple's iOS and Google's Android continue...

During the September 1 event in San Francisco, Apple released a high number of new products and services among which the new generation iPod Shuffle, Nano and Touch, iTunes 10, Ping – the new music-centered social network, and a TV show episode renting service.  Before announcing all of the above, Steve Jobs took several minutes to subtly let Google know who’s in charge of the market and sells most devices.  According to Jobs, Apple is activating 230,000 devices a day. This info is revealed after Google’s announcement from a month ago, which mentioned that 200,000 new Android devices were being activated each day, and growing.

200,000 a day does seem like a huge number of activations, doesn’t it? Well, Jobs is somewhat reluctant to believe it, it seems. Clearly referring to Google, Apple’s CEO told the audience that: “”We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers”. Then, fully confident of his company’s own forces, he added: “we think we are ahead of everyone”.

But this doesn’t stop here. Later on, when announcing Apple TV, he said that consumers are interested in Hollywood blockbusters on high-end TV shows, but clearly not “amateur hour”.  The reference was to Google TV, to be released soon, which will its users to get

content from virtually anywhere, including amateur video sites. Google TV will also rely on the browser’s search bar for main navigation. Steve Jobs definitely doesn’t like this either adding that people “don’t want a computer in their living room”. This, of course, is not the first pair of companies to throw subtle accusations and make fun of each other while their products are direct competitors on the market. None of us will ever forget the “I’m a Mac” adverts or the Mac Vs Windows campaign Microsoft is currently holding to draw some more users to its own products, by revealing all of Widows’ advantages and all of Mac OS X’s flaws.

Also noting (indirectly) that Google has a lot of good things to offer, Jobs revealed that AppleTV will play YouTube movies, whether regular or HD versions of them.  Now, as some of us watched the live stream from the Apple event, as soon as Steve Jobs started accusing Google, we somehow figured that Google would be back with a declaration.

As Fortune has found out, a Google Spokesperson has already declared that “The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.” What does this mean? That Google got the gist of Steve Jobs’ announcement and is now cleverly defending itself. Judging by this newly revealed information, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google will be back shortly with new numbers regarding the Android devices that were sold so far. While Jobs seems to think that the iOS is in the lead, several reports from research companies seem to prove that Android is either on the top spot, or pretty close to getting there. When it comes to smartphones, Android is considered the number one mobile platform in the US, and still in front of the iOS worldwide. In tablet land things are a bit different simply because very few manufacturers have released Android-running products until now. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, one of the few tablets that could challenge the iPad, has been unveiled recently and will become available in European stores in mid-September. It will also arrive in the US a bit later this year.