This fragmentation problem is starting to get pretty ugly. I have an HTC Hero which, IIRC, went on sale via Sprint in October 2009 and I cannot run Google Nav or Google Goggles, or use Bluetooth tethering via PDANet because I'm stuck with 1.5 My 3 year old iPhone 2G runs almost everything in the App Store while my <3 month old Android handset cannot even run Google's newest official applications anymore? This feels like a rerun of the Windows Mobile situation to me.
They also forgot the part where no-one is making any money on it. I know two of the top developers personally, and we ourselves have a pretty successful app in there. But there is nowhere near enough sales to make a living, even for the top selling apps.<p>It's unclear why the Android market is so much worse in this respect, I suppose having 50x less users is part of it, but I suspect there is something about the Android user which makes them less likely to buy. Downloading and installing cracked versions of the apps (and they are all cracked) is also dead simple.<p>In summary, great platform for users, terrible, terrible platform to make money on.