Schmidt is known for his candid (and sometimes odd) remarks, and today’s event didn’t disappoint.

“Google TV’s doing well,” he said to Wood, when asked about the company’s Internet TV efforts (an assessment with which Logitech’s CEO might disagree). Schmidt and Wood talked about the handful of electronics makers announcing Google TV plans this week, and Schmidt said a “whole bunch” of additional partners are expected later this year.

Schmidt then touted Google Music, and said that Google CEO Larry Page is leading the effort to standardize the user interface throughout Google’s properties.

But when asked about Microsoft as a competitor, Schmidt dismissed that company’s efforts. “Microsoft is trapped in an architectural problem they may not get through. Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said, feigning chagrin.

Apple, Schmidt said, has done very well, and said, as a former board member, he’s proud of that fact. But he still emphasized Google’s openness compared to Apple’s controlled system. Schmidt said Google is seeing 700,000 Android activations a day, totaling more than 200 million Android phones in the world. “Just do a little math with the numbers I just told you, and Android is on a billion-unit plan.”

In terms of Google’s core strategy for mobile, Schmidt said Google’s plan is to get everybody using its Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and stressed, “We absolutely allow our partners to change the interface, as long as they don’t change user compatibility.”

Regarding the early success of the Kindle Fire — and how the device skirts the Google Android marketplace — Schmidt said, “Kindle Fire has also done well, but they chose — and they did so legitimately — they chose it not to be compatible with Android guidelines and the Marketplace. So it comes with some limitations; on the other hand, it comes with a very low price point.” He noted that, as with the original Kindle, Amazon seems to be taking a books-first strategy.

Later on in the event, Wood asked Schmidt what he thought the most important part of the tech ecosystem is — services, hardware or software.

Schmidt seemed slightly flustered, answering, “It’s all of them,” before going on to suggest, “I’ll answer another question for you, which is, what was the most surprising thing in 2011?”

That got a big laugh from the audience.

But Schmidt paid no mind. He just forged full steam ahead to say that the increasing focus on the cloud platform model means everyone’s a winner; he also said the “secret” in computing in these platforms is to make them “as open as possible.”

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For Sprint, which is suffering from declining revenue and a thinning subscriber base, the move is a quick-and-dirty way of cutting costs and freeing up resources to focus on innovation and remedying the real and perceived issues with its services.

“This is about improving our customer experience,” Steve Elfman, head of Sprint’s network operations, said during a conference call this morning. “While we get the benefit of Ericsson’s expertise…we can focus our attention on bringing great devices, great services, great applications to them….We’ll benefit from the current scale and efficiency and expertise of Ericsson, and this will keep improving over time.”

Now we know why Ericsson declined to offer a specific business outlook for 2009 when it last reported earnings. That said, the company seems to believe that the effects of global recession on its business are limited so far. Investments in wireless networks apparently continue apace, econalypse be damned.

“I think we have had a decent start of the year,” CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said during a conference call with analysts. “We continue to gain market share. We had several strategic wins, we’re doing good in managed–both networks and managed services. There are some but still limited effects from the economic recession and still I think this is not the time to be too precise and predicting but realize that this is a very unusual time.”