Steve Jobs: “Open Systems Don’t Always Win”

Apple is often criticized for building products which aren't as open as they could be, and competitors like Google make a point about how much more open Android phones are than iPhones. But Steve Jobs is unapologetic about Apple's approach, which is to tightly control how everything integrates from the chips to the software to the industrial design. During Apple's earnings call today, Jobs pointed out that "open systems don't always win." But he also tried to reframe the debate. "Open versus closed is a smokescreen," he argues. "Google likes to characterize Android as open and iOS as closed. We think this is disingenuous." The real difference between the iPhone and Android is, he says, "integrated versus fragmented." Depending on the carrier and manufacturer, different Android phones runs different versions of Android . Developers are left having to create multiple versions of their apps to work across different Android devices. "The user is left to figure it out," says Jobs "Compare that to iPhone, where every app is the same." The real question, says Jobs, is: "What is best for the customer—integrated versus fragmented? We think this is a huge strength of our system versus Google's.