I love the concept of Android. An open environment that device manufacturers can use to build killer devices and an open environment for third party developers to deploy apps to those devices. And of course, brilliant move by Google to get massive distribution so that they ultimately get more search dollars. While Microsoft has always sold their OS, Google is not only giving it away but may also be sharing ad revenue back to those who deploy Android. They have completely flipped the model and Microsoft is playing catch up in a big way in the hottest market for OS right now. Game on!

The challenge, however, is in the apps. As usual Apple has set the bar pretty high and by controlling the end to end experience from hardware to OS to app developer tools and even app approvals they can ensure the “wow” experience that we’ve come to expect from Apple. There are certainly pains. Apple has no clear policy on which apps get through approval and which don’t. They lock down certain features in the phones from developers and generally rule the roost. At the surface, the Android model is a dream for developers but my experience in deploying my first app on it has unearthed some challenges. There are already so many different Android devices on the market that there is no way to test across all of them. The app I have, runs on some but not on others and it would cost me thousands of dollars in phones and with the U.S. model for cell phones in service plans too. With Apple, I just need 1 iPhone or even an iPod touch that has no service plan and I can make sure my app works the way I want before I deploy it. The Android challenge is similar to developing on Windows for the PC. There are so many variations of hardware and OS versions out there, there is no way to test across every possibility and while your software may run on your environment, chances are it will have issues on some other. Android may ultimately suffer the same issues as Windows as consumers will blame Google for the buggy apps as they do Microsoft for buggy software that Microsoft didn’t create. Unfortunately, simulators never perfectly simulate and this is going to be a challenge for Google.

Android phones will surpass iPhones in numbers but will developers be able to blow people away with apps as they’ve done on the Apple platform. Not sure.