Now all I need is a Google Android compatible phone to run the 1788 apps!

That's totally true, i got to find some time for Android this summer :)

Now it's Apple or Android. Sooo hard to choose one.

Before going all-gaga over the thousands apps, let's factor in so-far absent Android hardware.... which carries ample "opportunities" for their makers to mess things up. Integrationwise, iPhone might be hard to beat. The various Android-handset makers will have to differentiate among themselves, thus diluting the "Android experience," while Apple will offer consistency and persistency of its own Cocoa Touch GUI.

Yeah sure Ianf, let's not go gaga over it. But it surely has a lot of potential; and all the "open"-lovers would like to see a serious iphone alternative. Google does take the project very seriously and therefore I am optimistic (but of course time will tell)

Based on all those reasons mentioned, that 10 mill by google was well spent. Of the 1788 entries received, it will be interesting to see how many will actually be put to use.

Elvis

[Signature URL removed – Tony]

Affirmative, Yannick, on the "iAlernative," but do remember that Android phones will be judged on their pedestrian/ common user appeal, not degree of their openess (which, now that iPhone SDK is out --alongside a truly for suppliers and buyers alike compelling app distribution framework-- may prove to be of somewhat illusoric advantage anyway).

If the experiences of PC-clone market are anything to go by, OEMs designing for a common platform, it'll only take a couple of "corn-cutters" or fly-by-nite manufacturers for the Android to acquire a stigma of less than stellar performance – mobile phone users being by necessity more discriminating than stationary desktop ones.

Besides, it is not the iPhone that will be Android's chief competitor (I tend to see them both in the "same corner"), but Nokia, Sony Ericsson and RIM's market saturation tactics. That, and an altogether not unreasonable assumption that handsets overloaded with options --each one more unique implementation of some borderline functionality than the other-- will succumb to "featuritis" and forgo whatever K3WL factor they might have been possessing.