The world is in process of transition from desktop or notebook computing to always-on, always-connected mobile computing. Microsoft Corp. managed to make its operating systems a de-facto standard for the industry, which was adopting personal computers for office and home back in the eighties and the nineties. But when it comes to smartphones and tablets, Google Android is ahead of both Apple and Microsoft.

“This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago – Microsoft versus Apple. We are winning that war pretty clearly now,” said Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, in an interview with Bloomberg news-agency.

End-users activate around 1.3 million Google Android-based smartphones and tablets every day; While Apple’s iOS platform is still ahead of Google’s when it comes to media tablets thanks to popularity of the iPad, the Android is the No.1 operating system for smartphones. Market analysts believe that eventually Google will also catch up with media tablets as products from Samsung Electronics and other Android partners gain popularity.

^{Google's executive team: Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin}

Thanks to Android, Google can sell ads and other Internet-based services. However, it does not get revenue from selling operating system itself or royalties from hardware makers. Apparently, there is hope that thanks to massive adoption of Android by millions, or even billions of people, revenue streams will be extremely high.

“The core strategy is to make a bigger pie. We will end up with a not perfectly controlled and not perfectly managed bigger pie by virtue of open systems,” said Mr. Schmidt.

With billions of customers using Google Android, the platform becomes a de-facto standard for the mobile world and Google turns out to be a new Microsoft, the company with billions of customers, tens of billions in revenue and huge influence on the market. 

Tags: Google, Android, Apple, iOS, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8, Mac OS