Why is Google Targeting iOS?

Google officials always like to talk about Android as being "popular" and winning in bulk, without clarifying that the volumes of devices shipping with Android are mired in old versions of the software that don't support the features Google is desperately promoting. At the same time, the most "successful" and "popular" volumes of Android devices are also occurring in a market Google has been completely shut out of: China.

It's no wonder why iPhone 6 models have been eviscerating Android at the high end, leaving Google's mobile OS project stuck at the bottom end where there's no profits, little excitement and no reason to celebrate. That hasn't stopped Google's non-stop media cycle of euphemistically portraying Android as something other than a disappointing and directionless effort in busywork.

For instance, Google Photos, a feature salvaged from the ashes of the failed Google+ social network, is being introduced at launch for iOS, much like all the other Google apps. Google relies on iOS for more than half of its mobile ad revenues. That's because iOS has attracted a valuable demographic of users, while Android hasn't.

This is evident from another significant story from Google I/O: "CocoaPods," an effort by Google to facilitate the incorporation of its shared libraries for Analytics and Google Maps into third party iOS apps. Google is fighting to stay on iOS. That's a big difference from the 1990s, when Microsoft actively thwarted the Macintosh with inferior versions of its apps and frequently ignored Apple's platform entirely.

In contrast, Apple hasn't been releasing its popular apps for Android, ranging from Keynote to iMovie to its own version of Photos. Apple's iCloud doesn't even extend support to Android, the way iTunes did in order to help make iPods popular among Windows users.

Apple ported many of its Mac apps to Windows because Windows was the important, popular PC platform in the early 2000s. It is not important for Apple to support Android today. The installed base of Android users are not an essential audience to target, and are not even very attractive.

Google knows this, third party developers know this, and Apple certainly knows this, even if members of the tech media work effortlessly to paint a false picture that Android is winning, popular and successful, just because it has a large installed base, more than half of which is actively running a version of Android from the era of iOS 6 or earlier.