Google and Apple are both titans in the tech industry. Sure, there are other giant tech companies like Microsoft, Meta, and others, but Google and Apple stand apart from them all, both in terms of their effects on world-culture, and how deeply they have embedded themselves in our day to day lives. Naturally, that begs the question: who’s winning in 2025? Well, here is my take on Google vs Apple in 2025.
What is “Winning”
First and foremost, I would like to establish what I mean by “winning” as far as this article is concerned. Do you consider profitability? Do you consider the user-reach, or the innovations made in recent times? Well, I’m considering a plethora of factors, all user-facing, to see which company comes out on top.
Smartphones: iPhone vs Pixel?
Both Apple and Google have their own, in house smartphones, and both are powered by their very own, custom-built, in-house systems-on-chip. You get the A-series SoCs with iPhone and the Tensor SoCs with Pixels these days.
How It’s Going
Coming into 2025, both the iPhone and the Pixel have made some notable improvements to their predecessors.
Apple has switched to USB Type-C on its iPhones, it brought in the first 3nm chip in the industry (the A17 Pro), and it has continued making improvements to its camera system, including adding better zoom capabilities, larger sensors, and improving its image pipeline.
Recently, Apple has also started adding AI features to the iPhone with Apple Intelligence. And while Apple Intelligence isn’t here completely, the basic features are available on iPhones now, including writing tools powered by ChatGPT, image generation models, and more.
On the other hand, Google has been making tremendous AI improvements to its smartphones. It’s Pixel series, running on the Tensor SoC, allows Google to offer incredible AI features on the Pixel smartphones as well.
Plus, Google has forayed into foldables as well in recent times, whereas Apple has, so far, stuck to its tried and tested formula of titanium and aluminum builds.
iPhone and Pixel Market Share
In terms of market share, the iPhone is absolutely dominating. As per a Canalys report (link), Apple sold 225.9 million iPhones in 2024, taking the top place in the smartphone market by shipments.
Google, on the other hand, is not even in the top 5. According to some reports, the company shipped 10 million units in 2023, and between 2016 to 2023, it shipped 40 million units combined. Those numbers aren’t anywhere near the volume shipped by Apple.
Clearly, when it comes to market share, there is no competition between Apple and Google. Or is there?
After all, Google doesn’t just make Pixel phones. It also makes Android, which is the most widely used smartphone operating system in the world. But more on that in a later section. As far as the market shares for their in-house smartphones are concerned, Apple blows Google out of the water.
User Satisfaction and Brand Loyalty
According to the ACSI survey from 2024 (via AppleInsider (link)), the iPhone has earned Apple a score of 82/100 in user satisfaction. With this score, the company is tied for first place with Samsung.
Google, on the other hand, got a score of 77/100. That’s not all, between 2023 to 2024, Apple’s user satisfaction score actually increased from 81 to 82, whereas Google’s fell from 78 to 77.
Furthermore, Apple has a better brand loyalty than pretty much any other smartphone brand out there. As per one report from 2023 (link), 87% of US teens use an iPhone as their smartphone, whereas 88% of teens expect to have an iPhone as their next smartphone.
Operating Systems: iOS vs Android
Taking a look at the mobile operating systems that Apple and Google develop and maintain, there are some interesting factors to note as well.
How It’s Going
As of this writing, the latest software versions used by each company is iOS 18 for Apple, and Android 15 for Google (though Android 16’s stable release is just around the corner, and iOS 19 is expected to debut at WWDC 2025).
Similar to their strategy with the smartphones, both companies have slightly different approaches with iOS and Android as well.
Apple has been focusing a bit more on customization and personalization in the last couple of years. That has long been an area where iPhones have lagged behind Android devices, and Apple has been attempting to fix that.
On the other hand, Google has been spending the last couple of years steadily adding AI features to Android. Whether it’s things like Magic Eraser, or Best Take, Google has been using AI and ML to improve its software experience multifold.
iOS and Android Market Share
In terms of market share, there’s really no competition between the two. Android is absolutely the dominant OS. Globally, Android has a whopping 71% market share, whereas iOS has 28 to 29% market share.
That trend clearly establishes Google as a global winner in terms of Android.
It is noteworthy, however, that in developed markets like the US, iOS actually has a 58% market share as compared to 42% for Android.
Adoption and Fragmentation
Android may be the dominant mobile OS, but it lags behind by quite a bit when it comes to update adoption and fragmentation. Since Android is used by so many OEMs around the world, and on smartphones across different price ranges, languages, and regions, updates aren’t a simple task.
Google can release Android updates (as it does every year), but it remains to the OEMs to actually roll out these updates to their consumers. Samsung, OnePlus, and other major brands usually have a fairly good update schedule. However, there are a lot of smartphone models and manufacturers that simply don’t push updates on time, if at all.
Apple, on the other hand, controls iOS entirely and it is only on iPhones that you’ll find iOS running. Which means the company can easily push out updates to all supported devices without relying on third parties to do the work.
Plus, Apple can push out updates together, across all of its 1 billion+ active devices — all of which results in stats like iOS 17’s 70% adoption rate within 3 months.
Compare that to the state of Android update adoption (source): in mid-2024, 20.9% users were still on Android 13, 14.7% on Android 12, 19% on Android 11, and 13.6% on Android 10. Meanwhile, the latest version of Android available at that time (Android 14) only had 13% adoption. That’s when Android 14 was almost a year old, and Android 15 was months away from being official.
Voice Assistants: Siri vs Google Assistant
I wonder if there’s really much need for a comparison between Siri and Google Assistant. After all, for years, Siri has been the butt of jokes across the tech industry, and for good reason. The smart assistant frequently struggles with common questions, and more often than not, replies with the extremely frustrating “I’m sorry, I can’t help with that” response.
Google Assistant, meanwhile, has been leagues ahead of every other smart assistant out there. It can understand complex questions, it can understand different accents, and more importantly, it can actually answer most queries.
Part of this advantage can be chalked up to Google’s extensive knowledge base thanks to Google Search. The company is simply excellent at parsing data and finding important information — you add that to Google Assistant, and you have a winning recipe at hand.
According to a Statista research (link), Google Assistant understood 100% of the queries and was able to answer 92.9% correctly. In contrast, while Siri was able to understand 99.8% of all queries, it could only answer 83.1% of them correctly. That, in itself, is a huge difference between the capabilities of the two smart assistants.
What’s more, Google Assistant is simply present everywhere. You will find it on nearly every single Android device out there, on Nest Hubs, Nest speakers, several third party smart speakers, Google TV, Android TV, heck, it’s even available on the iPhone with the Google Assistant app (Free).
There’s really no comparison between Siri and Google Assistant. Apple Intelligence might have once had a chance of competing against Google Assistant, but the company botched the launch so bad, it’s embarrassing.
Subscription Services: Google vs Apple
Over the last many years, we’ve seen both Google and Apple start making “services” a bigger priority in their plans. Google put more focus on things like YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV, Google One, Google Play Pass, etc., to drive recurring subscription revenue from users.
On the other hand, Apple started its own services, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud+, News+, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, Apple One, and others.
Services Revenue
Apple is making tons of money from its services segment. In 2024, Apple made nearly $100 billion in revenue as per Apple’s earnings call (source). That is a huge chunk of money.
In comparison, Google’s revenue from services is not that big.
However, that is not to say that Google doesn’t have compelling services, or that people don’t use them as much. Instead, Google has free, ad-supported tiers on pretty much every service it offers. Whether it’s YouTube or Google Drive, you have a free tier.
Google’s user base across services is, in fact, huge. Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube have over 1 billion active users each — a number far greater than any yet reported by an Apple service.
While we don’t know exactly how much Google earned purely through its services, and not via ads, because Google doesn’t report its earnings in a way that differentiates between ad-revenue and service revenue, we do know that it is definitely growing in number because the number of users that pay for Google’s subscription services is increasing as well.
User Satisfaction and Quality of Services
Apple’s services are mostly liked by users, and a lot of the credit actually goes to Apple’s strong ecosystem integration. Some services, like TV+, have a focus on high-quality and exclusive content created solely for Apple TV+, which results in Apple’s catalog often winning critical acclaim.
However, all hasn’t been easy for Apple services. Apple Maps has historically been dismissed by users for issues with reliability and quality. However, the company has made some big improvements in the quality of maps it offers, especially in North America and Europe. Worldwide, however, Google Maps remains the king of navigation.
Speaking of Google, its services are pretty much ubiquitous. Gmail is synonymous with email these days. YouTube is indispensable for videos. Google Maps is the app of choice for navigation around the world. Google Search is so deeply rooted in our every day lives that we’ve started using “Google” as a verb.
There’s no way to compare these two behemoths’ services. It will always be an apples to oranges (pun intended) comparison.
However, I can say with certainty, that Google wins in terms of the user base, the scale of its services, and the utility they all offer. Meanwhile Apple wins in terms of the high quality content it’s offering, and financially, Apple’s services are paying off well.
Ecosystem: Walled Garden or Open?
If there is one are where Apple and Google are diametrically opposed, it’s in their ecosystem philosophy.
Apple has always kept a tight-control over its ecosystem, allowing only Apple devices to be a part of it, and to benefit from the features such an integration can offer. The term “walled garden” has been used for Apple’s ecosystem for years. Further, Apple likes to integrate its ecosystem by using devices.
Google, on the other hand, has taken the opposite view. Instead of keeping its offerings on a short-leash, so to speak, Google’s ecosystem is meant to work across devices, regardless of their manufacturer. Most of Google’s ecosystem features are software oriented, and most of them work on the web — which is inarguably one thing to which every smart device can connect.
Which Ecosystem Works Better?
It’s difficult to give a definitive answer to a question such as this. Both ecosystems have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Apple’s walled garden allows the company to dictate exactly how a particular integration should work. This allows Apple to offer ecosystem features such as Focus modes that sync across devices, copy paste between devices, drag and drop files between devices, using your iPhone remotely on your Mac, sharing nearly any filetype with AirDrop, using your iPhone as the web cam for your Mac, and much more.
You can even use your Mac inside your Vision Pro, while using the Mac keyboard and trackpad to control both the Mac, and navigate the visionOS interface as well.
Apple’s philosophy is to lock you into its ecosystem, and ensure you never want to leave. Plus, you keep paying for new iPhones every few years, and subscription fees for TV+, iCloud+, and all the other “pluses” you’re using.
Google’s open-approach to services, on the other hand, allows users to use whatever devices they prefer, mix and match manufacturers, and know that Google services will work across them all. Save your photos in Google Photos and they will be available on any device you use. Use Gmail? It’s available on any device that can connect to the internet. YouTube, Google Maps, Google Keep — it is all available across devices, manufacturers, and operating systems.
Google doesn’t care which devices you’re using. It just wants to ensure that the services you use are Google services. You can use a Samsung phone, an Asus phone, a Xiaomi phone, and even an iPhone, and you’ll get Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Keep, Gboard, and everything else across all these devices. Plus, you’ll get them on any laptop, any Chromebook, and Linux devices as well.
So Who Wins Between Google vs Apple?
As I mentioned at the start of this article, I’m considering a variety of factors to see who’s winning in 2025. The fun part, is that by each metric, a different winner emerges.
If we look at profits and revenues, Apple is clearly the winner. The company has simply mastered the art of selling devices priced well above $1000, and sell them every single year, with iterative updates. Further, Apple’s services and the ecosystem lock-in ensures that the company gets even more revenue from recurring subscriptions.
The company hasn’t become a 3 trillion dollar company by luck.
On the other hand, if we look at global reach and innovation, Google is miles ahead of anyone else in the industry. Android powers 71% of all smartphones in the world, and a large chunk of these smartphones are budget and mid-range phones, which allow Google access to emerging markets across the globe.
The company’s services, especially Search, Gmail, and YouTube, are indispensable regardless of which device you’re using or from which manufacturer. In fact, for most users, email equates to Gmail, videos equate to YouTube, navigation means Google Maps, and finding anything online starts with a Google search — Google has become the backbone of how we consume and use internet.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, it’s impossible to pick a winner between Google and Apple. Both companies have become such a uniquely important part of our lives that it’s difficult to decide which one wins over the other.
From a purely consumer point of view, I doubt there’s anyone out there who doesn’t use at least one Google service, or won’t miss it if it went away. However, there are definitely people who have never used an Apple device or service, and don’t seem to miss it.
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