Steve Jobs: Apple isn’t “closed”, it’s “integrated”.

While Apple CEO Steve Jobs isn’t known to join in on the quarterly earnings calls, he’s breaking from form for the September quarter. It seems as if his main concern was to dispel a “smokescreen” when it came to Apple’s iOS verus Android. While Jobs did briefly that RIM had a “high mountain to climb” to overcome Apple, he primarily focused on Google’s Android OS.

The interesting points of his rant (and yes, I’m truly calling it a rant) surrounded the open versus closed idea, which Jobs calls a smokescreen. Jobs brings up the information gleaned and released by the TweetDeck crew, in reference to their recent full release of TweetDeck for Android. Jobs made certain to highlight that there are “100 different versions” of Android and then goes on to speak about the potential for four different Android Markets as Amazon is the latest to release its own.

What does all this mean? According to Jobs, the smokescreen talk of closed versus open is really a matter of integrated versus fragmented. He touts Apple’s integrated App Store as a better solution, since there is no carrier or third-party involvement to potentially confuse the situation.

Surprisingly, Jobs even went so far as to speak somewhat highly about Microsoft. Using Microsoft’s “Plays for Sure” DRM method as an example, Jobs said that Microsoft saw that the idea didn’t work and moved to an “integrated” platform for the Zune player and software.

The interesting point of the phone call, however, was more how Jobs gave his message rather than the message himself. As he moved on to talk about the 7″ tablet invasion, Jobs became considerably more heated than his normal benign self. Is this a sign of Jobs’ concern about Android, or is it simply a new approach to getting his point across? The call is yours, and our comments are open.