Apple on Monday announced that one of its Board of Directors, Eric Schmidt has resigned. Schmidt, Google’s CEO, was a member of Apple’s board since August of 2006. However, there has been a lot of speculation that he may step down in the past few months as Apple and Google started to compete in more areas.

Of course, Google and Apple are now big competitors in the cell phone market with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Recently, Google also announced that it would enter the operating system market with Google Chrome OS.

“Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest,” said Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, in a statement. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”