Last week I spoke at the awesome 3060iDev conference (I highly recommend it next time) in San Jose. I talked about my experiences with Android as compared to the iPhone and iPod Touch (more accurately Cocoa Touch). After my slides we we had a very interesting conversation and many people in the audience were knowledgeable on the subject and had a lot to contribute.
The thrust of my presentation was that though I admired the openness, flexibility and what has been accomplished with Android I don't feel it is a viable competitor in the mass consumer market at least in the near term.
Its openness does bring up some interesting possibilities especially in vertical business segments. And in particular if/when Android is ported to a tablet based computer there will be many many exciting applications based around in the field data collection and presentation. Think guided tours, meter reading, opinion poll taking, mobile point of sale, etc.
Many people have been proposing tablets for a long time (grid, palm, etc) but I think now maybe we are finally close. And with the possibility of running Cocoa Touch and/or Android is really exciting.
I've attached the slides from the talk.
