‘I will destroy Android’, Steve Jobs vowed

Apple’s visionary co-founder Steve Jobs swore he would spend all of his company’s $40 billion to annihilate Google’s rival smartphone operating system.

The technology magnate’s hatred of Android is laid bare in a forthcoming official biography.

Jobs told author Walter Isaacson that he viewed Android as "grand theft" of his idea for a mobile operating system.

"I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this,” read a quote from Jobs in an extract of Isaacson’s book

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” he added, as quoted by the Associated Press.

Apple is currently in a legal battle with numerous smartphone manufacturers that use Android.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt (pictured, right of Jobs) sat on the board of Apple when the first iPhone was in development.

Apple unveiled its revolutionary phone in January 2007, just ten months before Google revealed its own plans to launch Android.

Schmidt resigned from the Apple board in August 2009.

"I was on the board until I couldn’t stay on the board anymore,” he told Bloomberg at the time.

Android is a significant rival in Apple’s smartphone business, with the likes of HTC and Samsung building numerous devices based on the OS.

Steve Jobs passed away in his Palo Alto home in October, six weeks after resigning as CEO of Apple.