No, the game is not scored in "total value of the ecosystem". The total value of the ecosystem is only relevant if you control the whole ecosystem. Google is making far less profit on mobile than Apple is. If its strategy of growing the ecosystem out and skimming less profit from it is a good one, we should see it in their bottom line. We aren't, nor do we seem to be trending that way.

Maybe someday soon Google's strategy of letting a thousand Android devices bloom will pay off. But that is still a "maybe". Apple has tens of billions of "definitely's" to counter that maybe.

Meanwhile: I think people are getting hung up on this whole Apple vs. Google point, and getting away from my real point, which is that:

(i) Google's bids for a stake in mobile have been hugely expensive and not particularly profitable,

(ii) Apple's bids for a stake in mobile have been hugely expensive and hugely profitable, and

(iii) Facebook's bids for a stake in mobile have been expensive but orders of magnitude cheaper than Google's or Apples, and could end up hugely profitable in the long term.

Facebook will end up looking pretty smart if that's what happens. They didn't even have to buy a cell phone manufacturer or write their own OS!

But after the first quarter would you rather be the team winning 2-0 thanks to a safety, or the team who have dominated the game and somehow are yet to get any points on the board?

I'm not saying Apple have only scored the safety, or that Google have dominated, just that we're no-where near the end of the game and given Google's game plan is a long one we can't say that it's worse, not right now - we can only predict that we think it is.