Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has publicly said that the Android platform is more secure than the iPhone.
The comment, made by Schmidt during the Q and A session at the Gartner Symposium/ ITxpo, drew laughter from the audience, according to a
report by ZDNet.
Following a comment by Gartner analyst David Willis, chief of research for mobility and communications, who said that Android was not the primary platform for a number of people in the audience as they feel it's not secure, Schmidt defended Google's mobile operating system by cutting him short.
"If you polled many people in this audience they would say Google Android is not their principal platform [...] When you say Android, people say, wait a minute, Android is not secure," said Willis.
To this, Schmidt responded, "Not secure? It's more secure than the iPhone."
The report elaborates on how Schmidt tried to back his statement with an answer, pointing out how Android had more than a billion users, and that since it was a platform that would be around for a while, it goes through rigorous real-world security testing.
He also said that in the distant future there would be an assumption that nothing was secure and that security would be devised on a per app basis for each user, as per the report.
When Willis suggested that it was still not clear how Android was more secure than the iPhone, Schmidt reiterated that Android was very secure and that people will be happier with Gmail, Chrome and Android more than they could possibly imagine, after which the audience broke into laughter again.
Android has been criticised for being more vulnerable to malware attacks compared to other platforms. There's less control over the apps available in the Play store and there are possible security exploits that could be exploited. However, Google has been trying to improve the security of Android, and had fixed some security holes with Android 4.3 update.