Wut? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... Look at the number of companies in European countries. Belgium has 14 and is so much smaller than the US. All we hear though is how US companies buy our innovative startups and move them to the US when they are on the brink of creating a new medicine.

So that means about 3 new malware samples came from the official store based on their sample. Also keep in mind that the android situation was sampled by their anti malware app which is installed on the phone while the IOS thread was discovered by an external security analyser and submitted to them so there is a certain skew based on methods/platform spread that should be factored in when looking at the numbers.

As far as I know, Google hardware and combined software kind of allows me more privacy/freedom than other mobile operating systems/hardware. I don't think it is fair to include the vast data they have when talking about how invasive they are. Other companies (even small ones) try worse things (uploading all my contacts without asking/going through sms's/selling my banking information/....). But I grant you that we are indeed in a dead spiral when it comes to privacy.

Actually, The original Android company had two phones in development: The sooner and The dream. The sooner was more blackberry like with a physical keyboard, the dream was well, the one you call the redesign. (first artice I found: http://bgr.com/2013/12/20/ipho...) But don't let facts distract you.