‘Apple created Android’

“Apple created Android, or at least they created the environment to allow Android to happen.”

Those were the words of Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop when he addressed the Open Mobile Summit in London on Thursday. The statement seems fairly innocuous until you start asking exactly what the head of the embattled Finnish communications giant meant by this?

The statement, made just after denying fresh takeover rumours, suggests that Elop may be trying to justify Nokia’s decision to throw its lot in with his former employers Microsoft and its Windows Phone 7 operating system.

If we take the statement to mean that Elop believes that Google’s Android is a copycat of Apple’s iOS, he also appears to be suggesting that Microsoft is offering something truly unique in Windows Phone 7. The question hanging in the air is whether there is any credence to these suggestions.

Certainly, Android takes a stripped down app-centric approach to the way it works as a mobile OS, just like iOS. Then again, that seems to be Google’s approach to everything it runs its software on these days. Just look at the chromebook, a device built around the premise that everything you could ever need is online.

It is also true that Android only launched in October 2008, over a year after Apple launched the initial incarnation of iOS (or iPhone OS as it was known at the time) in June 2007. In this, it is possible to see a kernel of truth in Elop’s statement. After all, you might think, if Apple hadn’t released first, Google would never have known for certain whether they had a hit or a flop on their hands.

The success of the iPhone, and its exclusive OS, allowed Google to see that, in Android, it had something it could offer smartphone users who didn’t want an iPhone. None of this changes the fact that Google had bought the main development company behind Android way back in 2005.

So, even before the launch of the first iPhone, Google knew that there was at least the potential for an app-based, bare-knuckle mobile OS.

That doesn’t change the fact that Android and iOS are two different products, with two different functions. They only compete in as much as they run on competing devices. Android’s goal is to run on every device which will have it. iOS seeks only to run iPhones, iPads and iPod touches as efficiently as it can.

Google did indeed make a brief foray into physical handset manufacturing but was mostly about demonstrating what Android could do, not about trying to make a Google-branded clone of the iPhone.

So much for Google being Apple copycats then. But what about the idea that Windows Phone 7 offers something which Android and iOS just don’t?

Well, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, but it’s complicated. It’s like this: Microsoft have rejected the idea of menus and app-centric interfaces with Windows Phone 7. Users will instead be faced with a series of tiles which act as links to apps, features, phone functions and the like. Some of the tiles, which offer live updates – of your Facebook page, for instance, are larger so you can check them at a glance. Others just take you to the phones texting function, or its contacts. It still does everything a smartphone should do, just… differently.

Is this better or worse than the Android and iOS way of doing things? That’s not for me to decide. Ultimately, it will come down to what every day users prefer. Elop clearly believes users will flock to Windows Phone 7 once Nokia starts using it. He also clearly believes that it will be the answer to Nokia’s flagging stocks and sales figures. How deeply does he believe? That’s not as clear.

Going on the defensive against opponents isn’t exactly the sign of a man going evangelical about a product.

Photo credit: thetelecomblog