Google's Eric Schmidt says relations with Apple are thawing Mr Schmidt, who famously left Apple's board in 2009 as Google was moving in on the iPhone's territory with the increasing popularity of its rival Android software, said on Thursday that the companies had conducted "lots and lots" of meetings in the past few months. His comments suggest a thawing of relations in Silicon Valley's most high-profile corporate dispute. The two giants enjoyed a close relationship in earlier years, with Google licensing its mapping software to the iPhone, and Mr Schmidt took a seat on Apple's board in 2006. However, in the years that followed, Google's Android software started to take a bigger slice of the nascent smartphone market. Steve Jobs, Apple's late founder, vowed to wage "thermonuclear war" on Google, and in the years since, the iPhone maker has fought expensive court battles with Android's smartphone partners like Samsung in order to hamper their efforts. Last year, Apple removed Google's maps from the iPhone in favour of its own, much maligned, technology, and handsets running Android now account for three in every four smartphones sold around the world. Earlier this week, new figures showed that Samsung, which uses Google's Android system, has overtaken Apple in terms of internet use for the first time, while Apple was reported to have cut iPhone production due to slowing demand. Mr Schmidt did not reveal what the two companies" meetings had been about, but said discussions were being led by Google's chief business officer, Nikesh Arora. Mr Arora is one of Google's top executives after Mr Schmidt and founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.