Apple attacks Samsung phones

Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller launched an extraordinary attack on Google’s “fragmented” Android software and its biggest adopter, Samsung, hours before the Korean firm took the wrapping off its latest flagship smartphone in the US.

Schiller’s rare attack on a rival, ahead of the Galaxy S4’s global premiere in New York at midnight, underscores the extent of the pressure piled upon a company that once stood the undisputed leader of the smartphone arena, but ceded its crown to Samsung in 2012.

Schiller, de facto number two at Apple, said Google’s own research showed the vast majority of Android users were stuck on old versions of the software, that Samsung’s new phone itself would debut with a year-old operating system, and that new customers would already have to update.