The mobile-phone maker is increasingly selecting Linux for Internet-enabled mobile devices, with its CFO declaring of Linux, \

Nice article, we need more of similar comparisons. However, I have some comments to it.

First of all, I agree with Stefan that we have to wait and see the first devices. What they will offer, how usable they will be and at what price. We can’t talk about too much at this very moment just knowing the first version of Android.

Then I’d like to add the well-known problem of fragmented mobile Linux platform. The most popular variants are supported by different companies and these interest groups are competing with each other. Competition is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is too many times. Let’s see how the newcomer (i.e. Android) will fit in to the system.

Even though the licensing model of Android (Apache v2) might be tempting for manufacturers, but I suspect it’ll lead to more fragmentation. Why? Licensees of the platform will not have to inject their changes back to the common codebase, but make their own variants. Consequently, developers will have to take care of the peculiarities of each variant. Please note that the same problem would be present in Symbian (and actually it is) if S60 was not too dominant.

Finally, let’s not applaud the security system of Android, but wait and see how the average user will cope with annoying dialogs asking irritating questions, like “Would you like to grant this and that permission to the application being installed?” Everyone can imagine whom these users will blame if their phones become useless - since “… an Android application can do anything”.

Briefly, I can see lots of positive signs, but some warnings, too. Let’s wait!