Also, if you only let some clients to use your market, you don’t get to brag about the “openness” of the market.

A few years ago, everybody got an iPod. Then they all broke down, while those of us who had got a Creative MP3 player for example were still happily using them. Most people are replacing their no-longer working iPod with an MP3 player from another brand. I’ve seen it around me. I was the only one not to have an iPod, now everybody around me has gone with another brand, be it Creative or Sony or some other brand. Same will happen with the iPhone.

Apple is great at creating a hype around a new technology but their stuff is overpriced and technically inferior – people get blinded by the shiny plastic at first then they realise they could have a much better machine for the same amount. Apple runs a membership club and as a company, they do very well by serving their overpriced 5-10% niche. So Apple will still make a lot of money from the iPhone but they will no longer dominate the smart phone market.

As a developer, Android is a dream. Java, an Eclipse plugin, a good emulator and great documentation! I know many developers like myself who stayed away from the iPhone because we refused to get a Mac for development when we already have a very good PC that fulfills all our requirements. Android doesn’t force developers to buy a certain product and is therefore a much more attractive option.

As far as the Android Market is concered imaging having 3 phones with 65,000 apps, and having 18 – 25 phones with an estimate of 1,000,000 apps . Now, which do you think the developers will flock too?

1. System:
Whoever can compare Android on actual hardware with the newest iPhone OS has to admit: Android is sllloooowwww. It lacks of memory and graphic power (which is among others essential for the touch UI). Android stutters while iPhone flows. Apps on Android stay open in the background, causing the typical Windows Mobile syndrome of system obstruction. A lot of task and memory managers on Android market show this weakness.

2. Android market:
Android market is fully available (i.e. paid apps) only in a handful of countries. Most users, which are buying Android hardware at the moment, become frustrated. Google has choosen a complicated shop model, obviously, resulting in leaving moust countries on earth without full access to the shop!
And paid app protecion is really bad: root your Android phone and you have access to all the “copy protected” apps. Distribute them freely on internet. Wow…

Seeing this I wonder how some of the posts here can be so positive. :-/

I really like the devkit for the android, and sooner or later I might actually have an app that others might have an interrest in. Heh.

Get off your butt google and you hardware manufacturers of android phones. If someone like me who really wants to get an Android phone, is still going to get an Iphone because you guys are so slow and incompetent with rolling out Android phones and OS to at least match Apple, then what chance do you stand to capture the general market who could care less or even know what kind of OS runs under the phone?

I really want in Android phone, but its just too easy to upgrade to the Iphone 3GS right now from sucky 2G. You’re putting out inferior hardware (mytouch is just the magic rebranded!) to apple months later!! That sucks!!!

I hate apple but you give me almost no choice but to upgrade to the 3GS and become further enslaved to Apple.

I dont see a decent Android phone better than 3GS coming out in US till maybe spring 2010. The Hero only matches the 3GS, months later (not even out yet).

If you think programming for android is easier in any respect (other than monetarily) than iPhone’s solution, you obviously don’t know your way around a keyboard, so just shut up. Anyone who’s actually used Xcode knows that it’s the bee’s knees, regardless of the stupid Objective-C decision. But hey, it kicks Java’s ass. Android is the future, however, I think most programmers know that, so we stay patient, but if there are other developers out there I think they would agree that Google has made it really annoying for us so far. Those of you who are also iPhone developers know that developing for iPhone is dreamy, and their SDK is robust, feature-rich, organized, and WORKS FLAWLESSLY. THAT’s what Google needs to catch up on.

Oh, and android was constructed in a way that any application made for it will run seamlessly on any other machine that runs it. That’s part of what they’re talking about when they say android is a “non-traditional” Linux distribution, and is why android in fact seeks its open adoption. Therefore, about three people from above I can remember are fucking morons for positing that there’s some ind of problem with not having controlled hardware on android. RESEARCH. It all comes back to the money, people. The money is in the markets. iPhone’s market is fucking fantastic and error-free. Android’s not so much.

That being said, Viva la Android!

I’ve been waiting for an Android phone (other than the G1) to appear in the US for quite some time now, and I’m about to give up. It’s all about the apps, and right now developers see that compared to the iPhone, the market share that the G1 has is negligible.

Unless some really good phones appear soon, I fear that Apple will already have too much momentum.

I really hope that doesn’t happen, because as a company, I have very little respect for Apple and heavy handed ways. The last thing we need in the cell phone market is Apple dominance.

I’m a Phandroid!

Not need a mac to dev, to learn an exotic language objective C etc..
Plus now the SDK integrates another part called NDK who make the SDK not more only Java, parts who need performance or that you want to import can now be written in C/C++.

Android market will be soon more populated than any other device.
Let the time come and you will see the “fashion based” popularity of the Iphone getting lower and lower.

Thanks google to make development so accessible !
(Lot’s of companies should do things like that, Nintendo, sony etc…)

No matter how great the iphone is, it will eventually wear itself out as people turn
to “other comparable options” to differentiate themselves.