So I guess if you are saying android is the phone to run on a bunch of random hardware which will outsell apple, yes, android is the new windows of cellphones. In the end it's closer to a user-friendly linux.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...
To me linux is everything under the hood. The File System, The Kernel, the Open Sourcing of the two, and everything built on top of that.
"I can't stand linux" only tells me that you need to log off from the internet because guess what most is run on.
Recently, Apple feared Microsoft, sided with Google and Google beat it.
AT&T limits some (all?) of it's phones to prevent them access to the standard Android market. However, I think to combat this behavior you can't call the phone a Google Experience phone or something without following some basic ground rules like allowing the standard market, and keeping up with updates.
Some phones do not allow the user to install a custom ROM or root the device. This is worrying because it would be like buying a Dell that won't let you reformat with *nix. Of course, there are plenty of vulnerabilities in the wild (akin to Jail Breaking) that get around this. I believe most vendors prevent the user from gaining root access to their device to upsell them on features that don't require any work on their part except flipping a bit in software, (tethering comes to mind, visual voice mail is another)
For the second part, I believe that carriers aren't going to let go of this income and become network infrastructure maintainers like cable companies without regulation, unfortunately.
