Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Predicts Developers will Abandon iOS for Android in Less than 6 Months

During the LeWeb conference in Paris Schmidt commented that he believes developers will abandon iOS for Android in less than 6 months, furthermore “he believes the high volume of Android shipments, which has given Google the largest share of worldwide smartphone sales, will win over developers.”

Since the introduction of the first smartphone and the App stores they brought with them, mobile users now have access to almost one million different applications, offering everything from social networking to addictive an hugely popular games such as Angry Birds.

When asked what he thought about the fact that most mobile applications are first released on Apple’s iOS App Store and then released on the Android platform, Schmidt stated that within 6 months Android 4.0 which, is known as Ice Cream Sandwich, will put Android on the map and gain the leading position for application developers.

While Schmidt might think that Android can overtake iOS, there is no denying the numbers, since the release of the App Store more than 600,000 apps have entered the store while a still respectable 320,000 applications have been released for the Android Market.

While Android does seem to be gaining in popularity, the fact that the App Store remains mostly free of malware, an issues which has been growing on the Android platform, added with the fact that developing apps for the iOS still seems to be more popular makes me believe that in 6 months developers will still be favoring Apple and iOS even if Android is gaining in popularity.

Check out some of the talks @ Le Web here.