Eric Schmidt Said Android Is More Secure Than The iPhone, And People Laughed At Him

REUTERS/Adnan AbidiAn entire audience laughed at Eric Schmidt yesterday, but he wasn't doing a comedy routine.

He was speaking during a Gartner Symposium Q&A session when a Gartner analyst said: "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."

Schmidt replied, "Not secure? It's more secure than the iPhone."

Then, everyone laughed at him, ZDNet reports.

He then noted that Android had over a billion users, is a platform that will be around for a long time and how that means the platform has gone through rigorous real-world security testing.

MacRumors, which picked up on the news, gives a little context on why people laughed at Schmidt's claim:

Back in March, Apple SVP Phil Schiller tweeted out a "Mobile Threat Report" by F-Secure which showed that Android accounted for 79 percent of the 301 mobile threats in 2012, while iOS only accounted for 0.7 percent of mobile threats.