Google’s former CEO and current Chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday said during a Q&A session at the Google Big Tent Summit in India that the Google Now app for iPhone and iPad is essentially in Apple’s court, hinting that the app could be stuck somewhere in Apple’s App Store app approval queue.

Without expressly confirming that Google Now for iOS is waiting approval from Apple, Schmidt did say the following when moderator Alan Rusbridger asked him about the app:

You’ll need to discuss that with Apple. Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t.

But Schmidt didn’t deny the app or Google’s interest in bringing Google Now to iOS or other mobile operating systems either.

We’ll remind you that it was only a few days ago that a Google Now app for iPhone and iPad app was revealed by a video posted on YouTube, and then pulled, which looked very much like the real deal. At the time, we wondered whether the app will soon be available in the App Store, but Google didn’t announce anything officially.

Google already has a bunch of apps available to iOS users, including Google Voice, YouTube and Google Maps, so it would make plenty of sense to see Google Now also launched for iPhone and iPad, especially since the app could help Google bring in more ad-based cash to Google’s coffers.

But it turns out that the app has not been submitted to the App Store, according to an Apple representative that talked to The Verge. Apparently there are no Google apps in the review process at the moment:

In fact, a company representative tells The Verge that not a single app from Mountain View is currently in the review process — let alone trapped in limbo. That would include both new applications and updates to existing software, meaning even if Google Now is to eventually arrive as a new feature of Google's Search app, it has yet to be received by Apple's team of reviewers.

That certainly goes against what Schmidt said just a few hours before Apple clarified the matter, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens with this one.

Do you think that Google Now should be an Android-only feature or should Google also expand to other OSes, iOS included?