We’ve blogged several times about Android, Google’s open platform for mobile devices (read here and here and here). Android’s significance: Because it’s open, it will foster the creation of more applications–the best of which will rise to benefit consumers everywhere. This will then create exciting new ways to market to consumers via their cell phones.

Android is all about the big picture, not immediate gratification. But during this week’s debut of T-Mobile’s G1 handset–the first Android phone to go on sale–most people lost the plot. The common phrase is something like, “Well, it’s no iPhone,” Of course it’s not; because the phone isn’t about the hardware, it’s about the software. And what that software will be able to do in the future.

Even the most useful news piece I’ve seen on the G1–PC Magazine’s review of the device–inevitably compares the T-Mobile pseudo-Sidekick to Apple’s phone. While PC Mag’s story mostly points out the G1’s strengths over the iPhone–departing from most other reviewers–I still think it misses the point.

Which is this: The G1’s debut is important because it will get more programmers into the Android game, developing applications and creating improvements to the platform. I never thought the first handset would be much, because it will take at least a year to get out the bugs, soup it up, and present a shiny impressive second-gen handset that deserves praise.

Hey, kinda like the iPhone!

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm
“I’d rather you text me