Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt today said he does not have a fundamental problem with device makers creating their own customized versions of Android, but argued that Android as it was envisioned by Google is often a richer experience.

BARCELONA - Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt today said he does not have a fundamental problem with device makers creating their own customized versions of Android, but argued that Android as it was envisioned by Google is often a richer experience.

Customization, or forking as it's sometimes known, "is completely allowed by open source," Schmidt said during a keynote presentation here at Mobile World Congress. "We understood that this stuff would happen; it is anticipated and it's fine."

That being said, "we hope that people who decided to not use Android Marketplace or some of the Google packages will see that they'll be more successful if they do so, but it's their choice," Schmidt continued.

"We don't prevent them from doing it, we don't require them, we dont sue them - another activity we don't do, if you get my drift," he said, getting in a dig at its litigious rival, Apple.

Ultimately, Schmidt suggested that pressure from consumers will drive companies to "see the benefit of joining this larger android market ecosystem."

Helping drive that adoption will likely be the "brilliant" Ice Cream Sandwich, Schmidt said. Once ICS is on every device, "there's nothing of that scale in the market today."

When those devices get ICS, however, is the main question on most Android users' minds. At last month's big tech conference, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), that all the various versions of Android do not make the platform fragmented, but differentiated.

"Differentiation is positive, fragmentation is negative," Schmidt said at the time. "Differentiation means that you have a choice and the people who are making the phones, they're going to compete on their view of innovation, and they're going to try and convince you that theirs is better than somebody else."

That "differentiation" has not appeared to hurt Android uptake. The company's mobile chief, Andy Rubin, announced today that there are now more than each day.

"Eventually it'll be a trillion; we need to produce more people," Schmidt joked today.