I think the difference is Google built Android with a cloud first mentality (and still pursues that) whereas Apple approached with an App first mentality. Subsequently, Google owns in the cloud (until we see how iCloud turns out) and Apple does better on hardware because they make their own hardware and Google farms it out (some better than others). Gradually they're moving towards the middle where Apple expands into Google's territory and Google starts imposing hardware requirements (and OS software improvements) onto manufacturers to improve hardware performance.