And they will, in short order, become roadkill. Guaranteed.

Here’s what it takes to compete in the smartphone market these days, the OS being but one factor:

Who can beat iPhone 2.0?

http://counternotions.com/2008/03/10/iphone2-competitors/

“…without spending a half-decade in the labs like Apple did…”

As to how long Apple spent on the development of the iPhone: 2 years, start to intro.

Indeed but is this necessarily a good thing? The point being is that just pulling stuff off the shelf does not a great cell phone make. The problem with cell phones up until the iPhone appeared was that basically what differentiated them was a list of so called features least of which was the ability to access them. The problem with the iPhone from a geek point of view is that it makes everything too simple. There are videos of children as young as 18 months who can be seen accessing things like the photo app and swiping through photos and such. The mistakes that the geeks make is to make the assumption that because it can be used by 18 month babies then that is all it is good for.

You shouldn’t have to have a higher computing degree to access the functions of your phone.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post the greed of the carriers and the cell phone developers will prevent Android from blossoming. And let us not forget Microsoft. They are about to lay off a large number of staff. Wonder what they are going to do with the spare money coming in – do you think they might give windows mobile 7 away to try and gain market share in the cell phone business. Either way they must be rueing the day they let Apple live as it has basically crushed their attempts at control over media and the cell phone business.

1. Write your own.
2. License one from Microsoft or The Nokia Mafia.
3. Cobble one together from freeware parts and hope enough developers write for your unique choices in hardware and software.

Android will do for Linux-on-the-phone in 2010 what Red Hat did for Linux-on-the-server in 2002 and Ubuntu is doing for Linux-on-laptops now.

It’s a common distro that allows work to be focused only on hardware differences, rather than hardware AND software differences. It’s not a perfect solution, but it creates enough stability for growth in other (more user-focused) areas.

Android will make it possible for LG, Epson, RCA, Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, JVC, Denon, or even Xerox to get into the Cell Phone game without spending a half-decade in the labs like Apple did or kissing the rings of Microsoft and Nokia like Sony did.

However, I think the average user isn’t interested in open source or open source products. They want an integrated experience. I like the iPhone and app store to your cable/ satellite service. Your provider installs the system, shows you how to use it, and you get all your programming from it.

Can you imagiine the nightmare of buying the equipment from one company, paying another to install it, coordinating with 5 to 10 different companies to provide content (apps vs. television shows), and then not knowing who to call for support.

Apple has bundled the entire experience into a single package. Anroid is NOT going to do that. Already there is talk of each carrier having their own app store. Then, there will be the Android app store. There is also talk of different carriers allowing only certain apps. I think this is all doomed to failure.

Android App Store now has around 500 apps whereas that was the figure the iPhone App Store opened with. The big difference is that the iPhone apps will work on all the iPhones / iPod touches. The problem the Android app store is that Android is just an OS – as each competing firm completes it’s version of the phone you are going to get differences in input, screen size, internal hardware available etc. This will make developers lives a nightmare and purchasing software a bit of a crap shoot.