Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller has taken to Twitter to poke fun at Android over malware issues. Schiller simply tweeted “Be safe out there” and linked to the Mobile Threat Report from Q4 2012 from F-Secure, which talks about security issues in mobile software. According to the report, threats to Android accounted for 79% of 301 specific threats in 2012. F-Secure said that 96 new families of malware for Anroid surfaced in 2012 alone:
Android malware has been strengthening its position in the mobile threat scene. Every quarter, malware authors bring forth new threat families and variants to lure more victims and to update on the existing ones. In the fourth quarter alone, 96 new families and variants of Android threats were discovered, which almost doubles the number recorded in the previous quarter. A large portion of this number was contributed by PremiumSMS—a family of malware that generates profit through shady SMS-sending practices—which unleashed 21 new variants.
iOS accounted for just 0.7% of threats posed to mobile operating systems. Apple usually reserves taking shots at the competition for official events. This jab from Schiller is relatively low-key, simply linking to a third-party report on mobile security. There’s no condemnation of Android in Schiller’s message. No marketing push. Just Phil Schiller having some fun with the competition.
