While it will provide many benefits to all aspects of the cell phone industry, it will also put a lot of pressure on the competition. Apple has a great device in the iPhone, and it's doing really well. The two major down sides are that it isn't open to third party applications, as I mentioned earlier, and that it can't be used on any other network then AT&T.
Developers might be able to adapt Android to the iPhone and really open it up. While people like the simplicity of the iPhone, many would be willing to adopt Android if it means they can add their own custom features to the device.
Microsoft has been doing really well in the mobile device market. In fact, it's been picking up steam. Android could really set them back after some impressive gains, and give Ballmer yet another reason to hate Google.
I see RIM losing the most here. They are the guys behind the Blackberry. After some outages that left many business people ready to chuck the device out the window, they might be looking to upgrade and Google's Android platform might be one of the candidates. Software can be made to suit any type of application. With Google backing the devices and Google's infrastructure to boot, reliability will not be a question mark.
Can't wait to get your hands on Android? Well, you're going to have to hold out a little bit longer. Android devices should hit the shelves in the second half of 2008, so you won't have to wait too much longer. The prototypes shown this month were very promising and looked ready for production. They were running on hardware already out, so the first generation might not have been developed for Android, but it looks like it will play really nicely with it.
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