This does not appear to be good news for Apple.
For the first time ever, the security exploit broker Zerodium is paying a higher price for zero-day attacks that target Android than it pays for comparable attacks targeting iOS.
…the move was prompted by a glut of working iOS exploit chains that has coincided with the growing difficulty of finding comparable exploits for versions 8 and 9 of Android.
Not a computer dude, but this more or less says to me that… no, wait, really: I’m not a computer dude. My opinion is probably useless. I think that what I read here is that Apple isn’t doing enough counter-hacking work, but I might be wrong. Or simply more and more biased against Apple. Certainly my next phone won’t be an iPhone.
I think as Apple has gone more “mainstream,” their marketshare has also made them a larger target than they used to be. Their whole shtick used to be “No one hacks Apples because only a few hipsters use ’em, and it’s not worth it.” This is no longer true.
Also, Alphabet has a vested interest in making sure that they’re the only ones siphoning up all of our information.
They don’t have a history of playing nice with competitors.