Google is currently holding a Big Tent event in India, and company chairman Eric Schmidt has some thoughts on competitors of all kinds: BlackBerry, Amazon and, of course, Apple.

During a question-and-answer session, Schmidt was asked about BlackBerry and other companies, to which he responded that "I'm a BlackBerry user, because I like the keyboard." Schmidt said that BlackBerry was "slowly in trouble," and that Amazon was in a better position than the Canadian company.

"Amazon has well passed any of the expectations of its ability to change distribution and marketing," he said, according to The Verge. "They're an important Google partner, and I think compete with us as well."

When it came to Google's largest rival, Schmidt was surprisingly amicable. He praised the company as an important innovator that creates quality devices. It doesn't seem that he sees Cupertino going anywhere any time soon.

"Apple will continue to be a tremendous technology innovator and build beautiful products, regardless of the market share of the products, and that's a great strength — they will continue to be the innovator," he said.

Of course, just because he thinks Apple makes good products doesn't mean he thinks it makes better products. Schmidt said the iPad mini is "too small" when compared to the regular iPad, which he favors personally. Either way, he said to take a look at the Nexus 10 tablet.

"Frankly, if you take a look at the Samsung 10-inch tablet, called the Nexus 10? More apps, more scalable, more secure," Schmidt said.

Is he right? As Adi Robertson points out in the Verge article, "Most Android apps are technically compatible with tablets, and Schmidt is almost certainly correct to say that's a bigger number than Apple's 300,000 native iPad apps. But Google has long struggled with app optimization for tablets, which often end up with scaled-up versions of phone apps."

Elsewhere in the Q&A, Schmidt was asked about Google Reader, which he said he loved. As for why it's dead, he simply said "Priorities" killed it.