Google Android - The Android Log

Then there’s the mobile platform: the iPhone, expected June 9 (mocoNews’s Tricia Duryee will be covering it for us live), and Google’s Android. Evangelists like Kleiner Perkins’ Matt Murphy argue that Apple has already provided an open platform. Google says it’s a contender before Android even debuts.

Quittner suggests that everyone wins with this kind of competition. But these are far from the only contenders, just the best fits in a construct. Aggressive Nokia ( NYSE: NOK) controls far more handsets than Apple, for instance. Microsoft ( NSDQ: MSFT) may be the PC platform of the past but it’s very much part of the present and a future without it isn’t coming anytime soon. Yes, as he points out, IBM was superceded by Microsoft, which is “losing its power to the Web” but any “next great” will have to go a long way before it’s independent of Windows.

Once again, Android is a complete mobile operating system, or platform, for cell phones and other mobile/wireless devices. Google is developing the system and giving it away to manufacturers in return for allowing Google to place advertisements in Android mobile programs.

Android can (and will) be able to be scaled to many different devices. For instance, on lower-priced handsets, Android may allow users to make phone calls, send POP/IMAP email and SMS messages and maybe take photos with a built-in camera.