With that said, Android is not a “gotta have it” phone. Its real value will be google giving it away to handset manufacturers, and thus leading to cost savings. If a handset manufacturer has to decide between WinMo (licensed per device) and Android (free) for a mainstream phone, which would you pick?

The iPhone has native Exchange support, and it is true push. Google Sync is not required for Exchange support, and if there are issues around push, it’s related to Google Sync. The iPhone most certainly _does_ receive emails when it is locked (“asleep”)… my phone buzzes in my pocket all day as I receive push emails.

Interesting that you’d pan a product that you have no idea how to set up and use.

http://www.htc.com/europe/product/hd2/specification.html

If PC 1.0 was the analog, it would be akin to saying the Mac is a hardware, software solution, and Windows is a software solution that can support any number of Hardware OEMs, AND you can create your own, derivative, customized version of Windows if you’d like.

That’s compelling scenario to Hardware OEMS (Motorola, Dell) and Carriers (T-Mobile, Verizon), who see themselves as having “unfair advantages” yet to bring to bear, and wanting to control their own destiny as the market evolves.

Mark

Nokia had two plus years time since the original iPhone announcement to come up with a nice web capable phone. Its only recently in 2009 they came up with decent browser on their phone. They should have bought OPERA and improvised it. They didn’t.

Either Nokia’s executives were dumb or they are slow to react. I would say the later , they are slow to react.

APPLE’s greatest strength is speed of execution. PALM is matching it. They came up with the WebOS in two years time. RIM , OTOH is churning out same old same old handsets.

While Microsoft is slow , they are letting the device manufacturers to pick the hardware. Look at the new 1 GHz snap dragon processors on WinMo phones ( Toshiba tG01 and HTC HD2).

Right now Windows phone is the first phone in the world to break the 1GHz processor barrier. I haven’t seen win Mobile 7 software , so can’t comment on that. But I would assume it be better than 6.5.

Nokia is neither improving software not strengthening their hardware.
They need to be on top of these two areas of the phone to get ahead of the rest.

While I respect Nokia’s phones , they offer no special features to me.

Give me a 4 inch screen phone, a 5 MP camera , super fast processor , clean UI with no lag, Qwerty keyboard and two days of battery life , now you are talking.

The next battle in my mind is making devices function more like laptops in that we need interfaces with email, contacts and documents. Microsoft had the high ground here, and Google is soon to meet this need. If I were Microsoft, and I am sadly not, I would build a cross platform browser ala Chrome, and develop the web based tools — Office — asap. Essential functional apps could be built in a year. Invest in something like Skype and leave it a separate company turning it into Voice. And, develop collaboration tools based on these two services. That was good for two minutes!

Nokia is not out…

It took a lot for me to want Flash on the iPhone. Thank you Apple! It won’t replace coded apps. It will replace most of the low-level work that comprises the media world. The only counter is WebKit (albums and such) packages across most of the platforms, and offline capabilities. These will be be here by the summer.

The Cliq is quite nice, and in the presentation I finally understood MotoBlur. Interesting stuff, though it needs to be developed and communicated well. Android will surpass the iPhone by the simple fact that it will be pushed across all carriers and handset makers. Palm’s tech is nice, but I can’t imagine them gaining the marketshare that is necessary to rank. Interesting times.

Sure ,Android will take over the market in a year or two to reach may be 20%, but then the uphill battle of bringing the new features will begin. Its a race where you have to bring new features and you have to do it quickly.

Companies who has money and a tough stomach for long term strategies will survive.
I don’t think Google has bandwidth to fight this battle on a long term.
WinMo was irrelevant just two years back, now , look at their new HTC Touch HD2.

All in all it will be APPLE ( because they are smart) , PALM ( because they know a thing or two about Mobile) , RIMM (because they make no nonsense neat products) and finally Microsoft (because they are Microsoft) will get more market share in the coming five years.

The loser here is Nokia.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/165473-how-big-will-android-get?source=yahoo

But I guess if Gartner guesses it, it must be true!

Gartner seems to be overhyping Android, and maybe for good reasons.

Yes, it’s gonna take a very powerful force to tap the market that Apple’s captured, but not impossible. Judging by what I’ve seen, Android has a VERY GOOD chance of becoming the top iPhone contender because of its nature. It’s open source. People do and make whatever they want for it, and hack and abuse it in a million ways.

@Nicholas brought up an interesting point. People are forgetting about Flash. Flash it powerful. That’s all I have to say.

Its an “open” project and the cat is already out of the bag, so even if Google puts pressure on vendors to support one build of an app that runs on all the Android phones, there is still going to be a lot more hassle for developers and customers.

However, I do agree that Android will become the dominant not-an-iphone contender, I’ve been publishing that prediction for about two years now.