The remarkable story about Android phones is not the phones.
True, Motorola's Droid is selling well, proving the platform presents a real challenge to iPhone. Not this year, and not by itself, but I'll stand by my earlier prediction that this is the last year iPhone will dominate. Next year, we'll have more new, hot Android phones, and the snowball will continue to roll and grow.
What I find fascinating is how software is revolutionizing phones. Software used to be a few buttons you pressed to find the right contact. Phone hardware concerns dominated: how usable are the buttons (blackberry), how big is the screen, how many megapixels does the camera have, etc.
It seems obviously now, but if you had asked someone a few years ago, "How do you take on the iPhone," they would have replied, "You need better hardware." Remember when everyone speculated that Google would get into the hardware business in order to build a beach head on the phone platform? But Google saw right away that the hardware had developed to the point where it didn't matter as much as the software on the phone.
Think about this: an entire category of phone hardware has been marginalized -- the clam shell phone -- because that form factor can't really run the software. Did "candy bar" vs "flip" used to be a preference decision for you? It was only a couple years ago! Then iPhone's large screen and keyboard phones killed flip.
And then think about this: Google, which doesn't even make phones, is now arguably the second most important company in mobile phone production.
The phone industry has entered a new phase. Software issues will dominate, and that change will be as disruptive as the transition from landlines to mobile phones.
Update: just noticed that Google will in fact have their own phone. So, Google will play both ends, presumably aiming for a completely seamless experience like iPhone.
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