I believe the different versions thing was only one of Tundraboy’s arguments/points about consumers getting confused by ’splintering.’ His other points gelled quite well with what you are saying, and I agree with both of you. I am pretty much the only tech-geek in my family (aside from my dad, and he doesn’t even get near being as geeky as I am), and I have seen what both of you are describing in action, both in my family and in my friends, whom I would consider to be perfect real-world examples of “end users.”

I went into the Verizon store and saw the HTC Droid. “Hmm, there’s the Droid. Doesn’t look anything like the pictures,” I thought.

I finally managed to find the Motorola Droid, in the front of the store in a space I had not noticed before. Had a really nice looking display. But I played around with it and thought the interface was a bit confusing and poorly thought out compared to iPhone. Not really surprising considering how much time and effort has gone into refining iPhone’s design.

Later on, I also saw a Droid flyer. Featured both HTC and Motorola versions. There was nothing to say what the differences were or why I should buy one and not the other. As I recall, one of them was $99 and the other was $199 with a $100 rebate, so even price wasn’t much of a differentiator.

Seems to me competition is tough when both sides have such similar products, but maybe that’s just me. Certainly if I were an Android consumer, I would be confused.

D

On the planned vs emergent strategy continuum, Google are way over on the emergent end both philosophically and practically with non-advertising activities. Google have done a very good job of diverting attention to the non-core activities and Android is just another non-core activity designed to shield their core advertising business that delivers the company its rivers of gold.

Schmidt is fond of saying Google likes to put stuff out there and see what the community does with it. Sounds fairly benevolent but it is a great way to reduce risk and externalize costs to the community. What is interesting with Android is that they have got the carriers and hardware manufactures to play this game!

Google fanboys like to herald each new Android phone as an iPhone killer but the Google business hardheads know that this is at least a couple of years away. Android won’t be out of beta until about 2011-12 but in the meantime they will develop relationships with manufactures and carriers by delivering phones to Android enthusiasts who are happy to beta test as long as they can mod their phones. The whole Linux proposition.

So in short Google won’t be a threat to Apple until 2011-12. The question is what will Apple have managed to deliver to keep developers and customers enthralled with the iPhone?

As an iPhone/Mac user I am happy for Google and M$ to fight it out for dominance in search and OS, this leaves Apple the space to innovate and deliver compelling premium experiences that can eventually become mainstream.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by isepsis: Now visiting http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/12/29/googles-nexus-one-takes-on-droid-as-apples-iphone-app-store-grows/ via TwitterRemote…