Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has maintained a low profile towards the clash between Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), but the company has not discarded its Android partners.
Relatively, Google has been silently providing support, coordinating with Samsung over legal strategies, giving advice, carrying out extra research, and searching for prior evidence, according to CNET.
Google submitted a request to the U.S. International Trade Commission in July to interfere on HTC’s behalf in its case against Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK). Moreover, a number of companies that depend on Google’s Android operating system to run their handsets, unexpectedly or not, have tapped Google’s law firm of choice.
The efforts by Google to support its associates show the weak line the company walks as Apple wages war against many of them. Though Google and its Android platform have a key role in Google’s partners succeeding, the company has yet to directly deal with Apple itself.
Apple’s diverse proceedings reflect an attempt to slow the momentum that Android has enjoyed over the last few years. While the iPhone 4S continues to be a phenomenally successful single device, there are scores of Android phones continuously flooding the market, ever broadening Google’s reach with consumers.
As of the second quarter, more than half of the smartphone market is controlled by Android phones as compared to the one-third share held by Apple, according to market research firm ComScore.
In other news, the research company IDC recently reported Google’s Android mobile operating system continues to lead in the smartphone market in the second quarter of 2012 with 68.1% of the 154m shipments across the world.
The overall smartphone market advanced 42.2%, indicating that Android and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s Windows Phone were the only two platforms which moved up at a faster pace than the overall market. Shipments of Apple’s iPhone increased by 27.5% to 26m, not sufficient to maintain its share from last year of 18.8%; its market share fell to 16.9%.
But overall, the market presents a two-horse race with the two major platforms including Android and iOS representing 85% of the market, with the remaining 15% shared between four main platforms.
