the capabilities of the phones were not questioned, but the availability of the phones was. The iphone was available nationwide at launch, the g1 was only sold in 3g markets. Stores in my market didn’t carry the phone for at least 3 months, that is half of the time the phone has been out. It is incredibly hard to sell a phone that isn’t even fully available.

Also, your comments about the unfair advantage the iPhone had at launch are a little off. First of all, the iPhone launched in a Edge only version. No 3G at all. So if anything, the G1 had the advantage at launch. The reason the iPhone outsold the G1 so dramatically in the first 6 months is because of one thing, iTunes.

Tens of millions of people have had iPods for years and a library already in iTunes. The ability to have a phone they could plug into iTunes and load all their same music and videos was too easy for people to jump on board.

Despite the fact that many other phones sync with Windows Media Player or other libraries, nothing comes close to iTunes in simplicity. So the iPhone was destined to ride on the iPod’s coat tails. That’s why it has exploded, even when it was a 2G only phone.

Android as a platform will be fine, and ultimately will probably pass the iPhone in number of devices out there because it’s like WM and S60 in that any manufacturer can release a device on any carrier, where the iPhone will always be locked into a couple of devices made by only Apple. But no single device will sell as many units as the iPhone because of the iPod roots.