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Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt must have had an extra dose of confidence in his cheerios this morning before taking the stage at the LeWeb conference in Paris. “Android is ahead of the iPhone now,” he announced, adding that within the next six months, development will shift away from the iPad and the iPhone as mobile developers begin to prioritize Google’s Android platform over Apple’s iOS.
Schmidt stated that he believes that Android’s higher shipment numbers will influence developers.
Currently Google has the largest share of worldwide smartphone sales, but is a lower priority for developers. That’s about to change, according to Schmidt.
“Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach that Google is taking,” he stated. “There are so many manufacturers working to deliver Android phones globally. Whether you like Android or not, you will support that platform, and maybe you’ll even deliver it first.”
Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, will be a big motivator for developers, according to Schmidt. There are 200 million Android phones in use, with 550,000 new ones being activated daily. Despite Android’s higher smartphone market share, it does lag behind iOS in terms of revenue, which could be a big hurdle for the platform to overcome when trying to attract more developer attention.
Just two weeks ago, we read a report from Piper Jaffray that pegged Apple’s iOS a having an 85 to 90 percent share of the total dollars spent on apps. Apple developers earned 3.4 billion dollars in 2011, while Android developers earned less than $240 million. Additionally, there are almost twice as many apps in the App Store as there are in the Android Marketplace, so the platform does have quite a bit of catching up to do in order to reach Schmidt’s generous (and hopeful) estimations.
It is true that app downloads on Android may surpass App Store downloads, but profit wise, the App Store is still going to lead in revenue earned in the coming year, according to analyst estimations.
Volume, of course, isn’t everything. Schmidt touts Ice Cream Sandwich as the solution that will put Android on top, but we’ve read that seven out of eighteen Android phones will never sport the current OS. Android also has issues with monetization, bloatware, malware, and recently, CarrierIQ. It’s money that’s king, and developers will go where the cash is. As long as iOS remains more profitable for developers, it’s going to continue to get the lion’s share of apps. So far, volume has yet to equated to profit for Android developers.

[via CNET]