Quality and quantity of contribution to a scientific field from an industry position
Speaking as a researcher in industry, there is absolutely no reason to think industrial research need be inferior to university research.  Top industry labs and top university labs regularly both compete and collaborate.

Industrial labs and university labs do tend to have somewhat different strengths and weaknesses, however.  The key difference is the fact that universities tend to be based around students, while industry tends to be based around employees, which has the following implications:


Students (and especially undergraduates) are much cheaper than industry employees, and so it is much easier for universities to take risks.
Employees are much more predictable and reliable in their work, so industry research can take on bigger and more complex tasks.
It is OK for papers-per-person-per-year to be much less in industry, so industrial research can do projects that require more infrastructure and less "sexy" work---even though they may be just as important a piece of research.


Now, it's true that most of the industrial world is not doing good research, or even any research at all.  That is, however, also true of the world of education.  For the top groups, however, I would suggest that the right way to think about it is not even "industry vs. university," but about complementarity and partnerships between the two, as both sides tend to be acutely aware of their advantages and disadvantages and therefore frequently collaborate in order to get the best of both worlds on their projects together.