Google in industry's 'defining fight' with Apple: Schmidt

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt expects more than a billion mobile devices around the world to be running its Android software within a year, intensifying a battle with Apple that he called a "defining fight" of the industry.

Mr Schmidt said there were already four times as many Android mobile gadgets - smartphones and tablets made by the likes of Samsung - and that the scale of the battle between the two firms was unprecedented.

"We've not seen competitive fights on this scale," he said during an interview with tech blog AllThingsDigital in New York on Wednesday.

Google and Apple were once close partners, with Mr Schmidt serving on Apple's board during part of his tenure as Google CEO. But the ties between the two have been strained by the rise of Google's Android mobile operating system, now the world's leading platform for smartphones and a direct threat to Apple's lucrative iPhone and iPad businesses.

As competition between the two companies has heated up, Apple has moved to cut its reliance on Google products by dumping YouTube from the new iPhone's pre-loaded selection of apps and replacing Google's mapping software on the iPhone with its own mapping service.

Apple's foray into mapping has not gone smoothly. Apple CEO Tim Cook was forced to issue a public apology earlier this month amid complaints that the product contained glaring geographic errors and gaps in information.

"What Apple has learnt is that maps are really hard," Mr Schmidt said. "We invested hundreds of millions of dollars in satellite work, airplane work, drive-by work, to get the maps accurate."

But he added that the two technology companies were "always in communication with each other".

Mr Schmidt also said he did not expect Google to become a significant player in China anytime soon, following its 2010 stand-off with the government over Web censorship and cyber-attacks that Google said originated in China.

Google relocated its search engine to Hong Kong in the wake of the episode, allowing Chinese search engine Baidu to widen its lead in China, one of the few markets in the world where Google's search engine is not dominant.