If you are a hardware manufacturer, you need an OS. You might want the classic Macintosh OS, oops, I mean, the iPhone OS, but Apple isn’t going to license it to you. So what can you get instead? You can get MS-DOS, oops, I meant, you can get Android.

Apple has the opportunity to be “the Microsoft of cell phones” by licensing their OS. They won’t, and so will miss this opportunity. After all, other hardware makers might not conform to the religious purity of Apple’s notion of style.

When Mac came out (1984), Microsoft had only MS-DOS. Windows wasn’t even a gleam in Bill Gates’ eye. Fast forward less than ten years (1992) and look where we were. Windows everywhere. In 1992 it was still quite inferior to Mac, but by Windows 95 it had caught up substantially.

Android will become “the Microsoft of cell phone OSes”. And in far less time. People will perceive Android as just part of what a cell phone is, just like today many non-tech people just assume Windows is part of what a PC is.

I am fortunate to have all phones with these different mobile operating systems, using them on day to day basis and developing for them. Hence, I do see the superiority/weaknesses each possesses. i would just mention a couple things here:

1) The review process of iPhone apps take far too long. I have never had a release, nor an update, approved within 10 days. On the other hand for Android Marketplace, it takes just 10 min.
2) The potential of Android is tremendous. Imagine, for example, Samsung coming out with a sleek Android phone that is comparable to Apple iPhone, that has longer battery life, FM radio and whatever feature that is not in iPhone.
3) Developing on Java platform is more comfortable for most of us. It has a gentler learning curve and simpler structure (i admit this is with sacrifices, if compared to variants of C).
4) iPhone developers are the only group of developers making big money now. But Android does have its monetization options, and it can only improve.
5) On the enterprise side, if companies were to issue phones, BlackBerry RIM beats Microsoft. RIM push technology is truly push technology (iPhone push is a pseudo push anyway). And they have their BES.
6) As for WinMo, it is just not my dish – slow and unsightly

The apps I use on a day to day basis aren’t available (yet) on android. I hate Apple in general so iPhone is out (and they don’t have all the apps I use either). While I don’t love Microsoft and there are days I wish I could use something else, WinMo is the best solution for me.

Time will tell.

The Windows Mobile 6.1 is years behind Android/iPhone/BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile 7.0 would not be out until some time next year. They do need a big change.