While Google has shown some effort at combating malware for Android devices, the numbers do not lie as it has been recently found that about 79% of malware targets Android devices, while malware for iOS sits at a lowly 0.7%. This is not to say that iOS is the perfect system, it’s just the way Apple and Google have setup their respective ecosystems, but it seems that despite these numbers, Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, seems to believe that the Android operating system is more secure than the iPhone. When told that Android has notorious security problems, Schmidt was quoted as saying, “Not secure? It’s more secure than the iPhone,” which reportedly drew some laughs from the audience.
According to Schmidt, Android’s 1 billion activations was an indication of real-world security testing, but did not further elaborate on his remark. Like we said both iOS and Android have been setup differently. Both have an official app store in the form of iTunes App Store and Google Play, but unlike iOS devices, Android devices can install apps from alternative sources, such as directly downloading the APK or go through third-party app stores without having to root their device. iOS users will have to jailbreak their devices to install Cydia, which then gives them access to third-party app stores.
It is because Android devices can install apps from a variety of locations that gives rise to malware infecting the system, especially when the average user is clueless about what they are downloading and allows the app more permission than it should have. Could Schmidt’s statements be referring to if Android users were to download exclusively from Google Play, that by comparison, iOS would seem less secure? What do you guys think?
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