Daring Fireball: Android Opportunity Addenda

That's my worry, too. I remember hearing for what feels like a decade that Linux On The Desktop will be awesome "next year," and it's only over the last year or that it's (barely) reaching adequate.

Right now the theory of Android is far better than the implementation. Let's hope that actually changes quickly.

The problem is that he only sees a single market, and that's the high-end market that competes with Apple.

Competing with Apple sounds good, but it's hard. The Pre when announced had a huge advantage over the iPhone which has largely faded away in a matter of months. Apple have the development team, the advertising money, the branding, the fashion, the R&D department, and the connections with suppliers to get hardware features before a small-player can. You're doomed to be forever playing catch-up.

What's eventually going to happen is that most people will want a product that's almost as good for a lower price, on a different network, or want something in particular that's different to what Apple are offering. In the long-run, that's Android's differentiator, as Apple aren't going to want to cut features in order to compete on price, or offer a variety of specialist features such as a physical keyboard.

Finally, I hardly think telling people to wait for the 2nd generation means that people will be "waiting forever". So far, only a single manufacturer, HTC, have released Android handsets, and both the G1 (HTC Dream) and G2 (HTC Magic) were undoubtedly rush-released and flawed. The trickle of much superior second generation handsets has already begun - the HTC Hero was released last week, and the Samsung Galaxy i7500 is supposedly out next week in the UK.

A very thorough discussion is already taking place.

I see even less to recommend the argument that "Android will fail because it's just like Windows (which everyone uses and makes buckets of money)"

Of course I note Gruber defines success in his own terms: "where by “work” I mean “produce a phone and software platform with a state-of-the-art user experience”"

But how many people actually care about that? (Don't get me wrong, I do, but I'm not going to make or break the success of any platform by my purchasing decisions alone.)

rumored specs: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/08/nokia-rx-51-tablet-captur...