More than 160,000 Droid smartphones are shipped globally every day, an indication that Google, the Android operating system developer,is ready to take on rival Appleas front-runner in the mobile world, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, told CNBC before Verizon's debut of the latest Motorola Droid X.
"I dont think it's a personal battle, I think its a competition for who's going to own the next set of mobile platforms," Schmidt said of his Google's competition with Apple .
"The fact of the matter is this is where all the action is, it's where all the software developers are going...I think of it as mobile first. Everything is moving mobile and we are participating in that," said Schmidt.
Android sales are up 707 percent from a year ago, according to Gartner.
The launch of the new Droid phone comes in the wake of Apple's iPhone 4, which received more than 600,000 orders on the first dayof pre-sale, before ordering was halted because of Web site malfunctions caused by heavy traffic.
Schmidt called the growth in the mobile industry "phenomenal" and said the mobile platform that exists today is the strongest yet.
John Stratton, Verizon Wireless executive vice president and chief marketing officer, told CNBC he is confident in mobile's future and looks forward to comepetition with Apple.
"Everything is moving to mobile. Mobile computing is just on fire right now. The industry is growing in leaps and bounds," said Stratton. "Look we think Apple has done the industry a great favor by helping to get this thing going, but we're very excited about our partnership with Google, with Motorola and Adobe, which we are going to be announcing in just a few minutes today."
