Ever since Google announced Android I predicted that it would become a dominant mobile environment. We're not there yet, but it's becoming increasingly evident that Android is here to stay.<p>It shares a lot of similarities with linux. That linux hasn't become dominant on the desktop can (to a large extent) be attributed to the entrenched desktop market where people and organizations use the same system (and applications) over many years.<p>Mobile doesn't have that yet. People switch phones every year or so and are used to them all being different. Vendors can therefore pretty much pick a new OS every few years (I'm simplifying this, of course).<p>When selecting a new OS, vendors will evaluate two main elements - price and control. Pricing usually being bound to licenses (a form of control held by a third party), it usually just boils down to control.<p>And what does Android offer? Control over everything vendors care about. For the companies involved, software development is cheap, but not so cheap that they can just build an OS from scratch (hi there Palm!). Also, Android is low on legacy and fully web-ified (sorry for using that word).<p>Sure, you love your iPhone. Spare me the feedback. I get forwarded loads of links telling me how crap Android systems are compared to Apple's stuff. But that's just Apple with Apple hardware, Apple software and hard contracts for the carriers. All the other vendors are hell-bent on breaking that. With Android Google (who is not a vendor in this space) is basically flooding that market with free, top-of-the-line R&D on the software end. Of course people building the hardware are going to pick that up.
The only non-fanboy argument in the article is Japanese carriers' hunger for control. This is absolutely true, and might be the reason Android gets some traction in Japan. But consider the implications of this for the user -- why is it that you think that Android is a "good" OS, something that you'd want on your own phone? "It's open and I can do whatever I want with it"? Well, not after the Japanese carriers have their way with it.