War Games

The battle between Apple & Google is really starting to heat up and it's being waged mainly in the mobile space. This week has featured several interesting firsts for the two companies.

Google struck first yesterday with news of its first ever hardware, the Nexus One handset. We've heard rumors of the release for weeks, but Google finally made it official yesterday (and made it availabe for purchase immediately). And today came news that Apple is making its first real foray into advertising with the purchase of mobile ad company Quattro Wireless (a counterpunch to Google's recent acquisition of rival mobile ad company, AdMob).

So what's next? And what is Apple planning to do with Quattro? It's likely a move to solidfy its iPhone platform as an ideal platform for app developers (helping them to more easily monitize their apps through advertising). But with recent rumors swirling that Google is looking to release additional hardware (possibly a netbook running on Google's own Chrome OS), it will be interesting to see if Apple starts to feel threatened by Google's move into their space. And where's Microsoft hiding in all of this?