very interesting.
but with Sony, Samsung and Motorola installing Android on their handsets, iPhone will lack the market share they crave. iPhone is a brilliant phone, they just progressed too slowly with it. I have a feeling that multi-tasking will be just a tease. Something big will happen for 4G.
i couldnt justify buying an iphone (for £200) with the camera it has. so android does what i need it to do for the time being.
Apple isn't interested in selling everyone an iPhone, just like they're not interested in selling everyone a Mac. They'll maintain a position at the high end of the market with a premium price and a big fat profit margin, just like they do with every product.
Meanwhile, Android handsets will be reduced to commodities in a race to the bottom because the manufacturers will find it very difficult to differentiate their products, just as with Windows PCs. The only possible exception is HP, because they now have an OS of their own and the in-house skills to develop it further.
Apple doesn't give a fuck if 20 times as many Android phones as iPhones sell, because they'll make 20 times as much on each handset sold, and probably make a lot more on apps and multimedia, because their customers, simply by definition of buying an iPhone, are not as price sensitive.
It'd be retarded to claim Google has somehow beaten Apple when they receive exactly zero pence for each Android handset sold that isn't a Nexus One.
What effect this will have with regard to the availability of software on each platform remains to be seen. Without a doubt, Android will end up with more applications, but that's a small part of the story. Just as Apple won't allow cross-platform apps because they reduce the iPhone to lowest-common denominator specs, Android apps will mostly be designed towards the least capable handsets out there to maximise the potential market.
This will very likely mean older version of Android. Why? Because Android phones are sold by phone companies, and phone companies have no culture of or interest in updating hardware they've already sold. Waste of resources. The iPhone is a different kettle of fish (as is the Palm Pre, because they're made by computer companies). Typically, Apple is still adding features to your two-year old phone.
Even if HTC et al do decide they'd like to offer you an update to the next version of Android, that's often not possible, because Google develops Android entirely in secret, and informs no-one of the hardware specs it will require for the next version. It might be released as open source, but Apple and Microsoft both give developers far more information on and access to upcoming version of their OSes than Google, who typically says next to nothing until it spits out the next version of Android fully-formed.
Innovation is good, but if innovation is limited to 1 device type then it is not so good. I am amazed no one had put a lawsuit against the monopoly of Apple OS on Apple phones.
The fact that Adobe has done exactly that aside, it's a completely preposterous idea. What Apple is doing with the iPhone is in no way different to what Sony, MS and Nintendo do with their consoles. Furthermore, equating a 20% market share with a monopoly is more than a stretch.