Bill Gates says his preference for Android over iPhone is due to pre-installed software

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates attended this week’s first meeting at the Clubhouse, the increasingly popular invitation-only chat app, where he answered a series of questions as part of an ongoing book tour.

Gates was interviewed by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin and, given that the Clubhouse app is currently only available on iOS, naturally one of the questions that arose was whether Gates regularly uses an iPhone and whether he prefers iOS to Android.

“I actually use an Android phone,” said Gates. “Since I want to keep track of everything, I usually play with iPhones, but the one I carry with me is Android.”

“So, Android vs. Apple – is that a religious thing?” asked Sorkin.

“Some of the Android manufacturers pre-install Microsoft software in a way that makes it easy for me,” replied Gates. “They are more flexible about how the software connects to the operating system. So this is what I got used to. You know, a lot of my friends have ‌iPhone‌, so there is no purity.”

Clubhouse co-founder Paul Davison, who was also in the room for a brief time, told Gates and Sorkin that an Android version of the app is the “main feature” they are currently working on and are most excited about.

In a 2019 interview, Gates admitted that Microsoft’s defeat for Android as the standard non-Apple phone platform was “one of the biggest mistakes of all time” for the Redmond-based company.

To be fair to Gates, it was Steve Ballmer who served as Microsoft’s CEO between 2000 and 2014. Ballmer laughed at the PiPhone‌, but Apple laughed last, since Windows Phone never managed to gain any significant market share between mobile operating systems and was finally abandoned.

During the Clubhouse meeting, Gates admitted that he had a difficult relationship with Steve Jobs, but called the former Apple CEO “unique”. Other topics that emerged in Wednesday’s online discussion included the global health crisis, climate change and Gates’ new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”. The full interview is available on YouTube.