Android

Anyway, it's a mistake pit Google against Apple. The real battle will be between Google and Microsoft for the exact same hardware manufacturers and sales channels. (Meanwhile, you can buy an iPad from an Apple Store or from Walmart without any carrier involvement).

Google hasn't managed the fragmentation problem very well, they haven't done enough to control the quality the Android OS between carriers and manufacturers, and they've utterly mismanaged the Android Market. I'm no fan of Microsoft or WinMo 7, but I expect Microsoft to do a much better job at addressing all of those issues.

Microsoft can also leverage their Zune desktop software.

And Microsoft's development tools are generally very popular with developers. I've done some work with WPF and I found it very impressive and I would expect their Phone SDK to be of similar quality. On the other hand, even though I generally like Java I'm finding the move from iPhone development to Android development to be a depressing step backwards both in terms of the dev tools and especially the SDK.

Then again, it is Microsoft we're talking about. It may take them another 3 or 6 years to get it right.

All true, and still they've had great success. (I'm actually surprised, given how bad the Market is and how blatantly the carriers are screwing up the phones). Which just means they can do even better if they can address those obvious problems.

On the other hand, even though I generally like Java I'm finding the move from iPhone development to Android development to be a depressing step backwards

It was the opposite for me. Between getting rid of header files and manual memory management, and having the app run right away on my phone rather than futzing with certificates, I'm enjoying Android development much more.

I'd argue they haven't. The success would've been the adoption of the platform - but as far as I can see none of the major Android phone vendors actually support the platform - they see it more as a way to skimp on software development costs, and offload it onto Google instead. There's little to no interest in even updating the phones, or supporting the platform as a whole.

I feel that Google has been taken for a ride by Motorola, HTC, et al - there's a lot of lip service paid to Android, but none of their actions have helped solidify the platform, instead being treated simply as free code. The fact that there are a lot of units of hardware moving off shelves means little, IMHO, for the long-term success of the platform.