"These companies are true competitors in every sense of the word now. If you think about how they are actually attacking the market, they are really competing everywhere," Schacter said. "It's not just search or maps, they are competing in every sense of the word now, in terms of having products that are very different for the end user."
Currently, Google search is the default search engine on Apple's devices. Advertisers pay Google for clicked ads and then Google pays Apple. While Google may lose profits if Apple removes its search engine from Apple's products, it could also stand to benefit.
"In the future, if they were to move away from Google, you would have to go to Google direct and Google could keep 100 percent of the economics," Schacter said.
Schacter said that while he sees Apple dropping Google search, he doesn't see the iPhone maker turning to another search engine like Microsoft's Bing to replace Google in its products. Rather, he said Apple is likely to adopt more of an app-centric search for users.
'We don't think this a matter of Apple versus Bing, it's much more about will Apple use that app culture," Schacter said. "Will they (Apple) go to Yelp? Will they go to OpenTable? Will they go to third party vendors to really answer peoples' questions? And that's what we think could happen over time."
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