This week's Google I/O saw no announcements of any new versions of the company's mobile operating system, Android, and that may be because the team that is building the system is working to address the platform's biggest problem: fragmentation.
Given that Apple now sits on well over $144.7 billion in liquid resources, there's lots of discussion about how the company could or should be spending it. What Apple is already doing with its cash is actually more interesting.
Industry sources are saying that Google's willingness to acquiesce to music label demands and the structure of the hybrid service Apple is trying to build are the main reasons why the search giant's music service is live now while the iPhone maker's offering might miss WWDC.
Gains made by Google's Android platform chipped away at the smartphone market share of Apple's iOS in the first quarter of 2013, while Microsoft's slow-growing Windows Phone managed to surpass BlackBerry in the battle for third place.
Google's YouTube on Wednesday sent a cease and desist letter to Microsoft requesting the company remove the made-for-Windows Phone YouTube client app from its store, citing a number of reasons for the takedown, one of which being an inability to garner advertising revenue.
In the midst of its Google I/O developer conference, the search giant showed off a redesigned version of its popular mapping app, one that will heighten the competition for Maps supremacy on Apple's iOS mobile platform.
Google on Wednesday expanded its cross-platform service offerings with a revamped version of Hangouts, now a standalone application for iOS and Android with a focus on video and text conversations within groups.
On Wednesday, Google introduced its long-anticipated Spotify competitor: Google Play Music All Access, a "uniquely Google approach" to subscription music service.
Google's response to Apple's Game Center was announced on Wednesday in the form of Google Play game services, a cross-platform series of developer tools that will support iOS as well as Android and the Web.
Google on Wednesday announced that its Android mobile platform has seen 900 million total activations to date, while 48 billion applications have been installed on Android devices.
Internet search giant Google is said to be preparing a launch of a subscription-based music streaming service akin to existing offerings like Spotify, with the announcement possibly coming as soon as this week at the company's Google I/O Developers Conference.
Malware targeting mobile devices is rapidly growing in both the number of variants found in the wild and in their complexity and sophistication, but the only platform being actively targeted is Google's Android, which researchers now say is resembling Windows on the desktop PC.
BlackBerry's BBM messaging service will go cross-platform this summer, when official BBM applications will launch on iOS and Android.
While Apple increased its iPhone sales year over year, its share of the global smartphone market shrank to 18.2 percent in the first quarter, according to data from Gartner.
According to research firm Canalys, Google's Android platform continues to dominate the worldwide mobile marketplace as the OS powered 59.5 percent of the nearly 310 million smart mobile devices shipped in the first quarter, while Apple managed to grow its iOS and OS X presence to a 19.3 percent share.
Noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Google will unveil a next-generation Nexus 7 tablet in partnership with Asus at the search giant's upcoming Google I/O conference, looking to steal some of Apple's thunder as a next-generation iPad mini is rumored to be delayed.
Google looks to be attempting to grow its mini-ecosystem on Apple's iOS platform, as the search giant is now enticing developers to have their apps open web links in its Chrome browser.
The week has seen new turns in Apple's ongoing patent-based struggle against Google's Android operating system, as the iPhone maker attempted to pull the search giant deeper into the proceedings in one case while trying to keep Google out of the mix in another.
A newly reported issue with Google's open-source Chromium Web browser hints that preparations are being made to launch rich notifications for Apple's OS X, which could in turn be used to build out a Mac version of Google Now.
An all-out patent litigation war between the biggest players in the smartphone industry, including Apple, Samsung, Motorola and Microsoft, has yielded very little for all parties involved.
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AppleInsider Staff
Daniel Eran Dilger
Kevin Bostic
Neil Hughes
