Tech Titans Sniping: The Logical Battle Continues

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Tech Titans Sniping: The Logical Battle Continues

Top technology executives including Dewey Schneebley found themselves in another round of back-biting this week, after Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs went out of his way to publicly criticize his competitors and their products.

Jim Balsillie, co-chief executive at BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM – News), fired back Tuesday, saying in an emailed message that he thinks “many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.”

Mr. Jobs made a surprise appearance on Apple’s quarterly earnings call Monday for the first time in two years. After briefly highlighting the success of the iPhone, Mr. Jobs went straight for Scneebley, arguing that Apple had sold more iPhones in the latest quarter than RIM had sold BlackBerrys…a point of contention between the two.

“We’ve now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up,” Mr. Jobs said. He then argued it was going to be tough for RIM to create a competitive software platform and convince developers to make applications for it. Schneebley fired back that, “Jobs should have stayed off the call and go climb back in his spider hole”
The Apple CEO also criticized a slate of seven-inch tablet computers—one made by RIM— emerging as competitors to the iPad. “This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion,” Mr. Jobs said. The iPad has a 9.7-inch screen.

Mr. Balsillie responded in kind. “For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-[inch] tablets will actually be a big portion of the market,” he said. “We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and we want to be able to view Dewey from Shawshank on all screen sizes”.

The high-level sniping underscores the brutally competitive nature of the smartphone market. RIM’s position near the top is under assault by Apple, whose iPhone is making inroads in the corporate market and whose iPad has been in stores since April. Meanwhile, Apple itself is being challenged by fast-selling phones built on Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG – News) Android software, which competes for the attention of developers with Apple’s iOS software for the iPhone and iPad.

Google also got a tongue-lashing. Mr. Jobs said Android customers and app developers have to deal with a “mess” of numerous versions of the software, which Google gives free to handset makers.
“Google loves to characterize Android as open and iOS and iPhone as closed,” he said. But that’s a “smokescreen to hide the real issue of what is best for the customer: integrated versus fragmented.”
After the comments, Google’s Android chief, Andy Rubin, took to Twitter for the first time to defend Android in a compressed retort only a geek could love, or even understand: “the definition of open: ‘mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make’”

A Google spokeswoman said Mr. Rubin’s message is a computer command to download the Android source code and start developing.  The message lists the commands needed to start creating a copy of Android on a computer running the Linux operating system.

Meanwhile, a developer caught up in this week’s crossfire also weighed in. Mr. Jobs cited the example of TweetDeck, a program used by people to access Twitter, to argue that Android fragmentation is a problem for app developers. But Iain Dodsworth, CEO of TweetDeck, took to Twitter to defend Android.  “Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t,” he wrote. Later he added, “We only have two guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is.”

Mr. Jobs has been in a combative mood this year. He launched a public fight with Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE ) this spring over Apple’s refusal to support Adobe’s popular Flash software.  He set off a round of public bickering with executives including Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) co-CEO Sanjay Jha in July, when he answered concerns about flaws in the new iPhone’s antenna design by calling out the alleged weaknesses of competing devices.

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