By 35% a month lately, according to the ad requests pouring into AdMob's network

Click to enlarge. Other includes HTC Desire, Samsung Moment, Samsung Galaxy and HTC Tatoo. Source: AdMob.

"Traffic from Android devices has increased dramatically over the last year," according to a report issued Friday morning by AdMob, the world's largest purveyor of mobile ads.

In November alone, Android devices accounted for 27% of the hits on AdMob's U.S. ad network, up from 20% in October — a 35% increase in one month.

Of course, AdMob is counting ad requests, not handset sales, so its numbers cannot be used to measure market share in the traditional sense. But its reports do provide a monthly snapshot of where the rapidly expanding smartphone market is headed. The growth in Android traffic — fueled by the release of new Android-powered devices — is one of the featured themes of AdMob's November report.

Among its Android-related findings:

• Six months ago a single Android device, the HTC Dream (G1), generated 92% of Android traffic, while in November 2009 the G1 accounted for only 37% of requests.
• The Motorola Droid, HTC Magic and HTC Hero generated 22%, 21% and 9% of Android requests worldwide in November 2009, respectively.
• In November, 88% of Android traffic in the AdMob network was generated in the U.S. The U.K. was with second largest market with 4% of requests.
• In the U.S., the Motorola (MOT) Droid quickly became the No. 2 Android handset, thanks in part to heavy marketing by Verizon (VZ). In the U.K., the HTC Dream, HTC Magic, and HTC Hero make up 92% of Android requests.

AdMob was acquired by Google (GOOG) in November for $750 million shortly after Apple (AAPL) had reportedly expressed interest in buying its network. You can download its November report as a pdf from metrics.admob.com.

See also:

• Where in the world are Apple's 78 million handsets?
• The smartphone wars, one year later

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Sorry, Google. The apps (and by that we mean appetizers) won out.

At long last there is proof of Google’s (GOOG)  long-anticipated smartphone. Late last week, the online advertising giant started handing out an Android-powered phone to employees. While refusing to detail the specs, the official Google mobile blog refers to it as a “mobile lab.”

The Googley vagueness continues on the blog, where it is described as, “A device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities.”

Of course, the gadget-obsessed immediately ran to the Federal Communications Commission to get those specs, and photos have been popping up all over. So, we now (mostly) know that it is a sleek-looking touch-screen phone made by HTC, powered by a high-end Qualcomm (QCOM) processor and featuring the latest Android 2.1 OS. From the looks of things, this GSM phone could operate on any number of networks abroad, but seems destined at least for T-Mobile in the United States.

With all the Googlers eager to show off their new gizmos, and this, the calendric peak of the holiday party season, it was inevitable that in the Bay Area at least, the two would combine.  Sure enough, a friend attending a holiday party over the weekend in San Francisco with a number of Google folks making merry was presented with the new phone. “Mostly, I wanted to see the photo of the engagement ring that was on it,” she says, requesting anonymity. “It wasn’t an iPhone, and besides, there were pigs-in-a-blanket and these really good mini-cheeseburgers, and I was hungry, so I didn’t pay too much attention. “ So there you have it.

Table stakes: iPhone quality hardware

Discounting for a moment that this occurred in gadget-jaded Silicon Valley (and that the mini-cheeseburgers were really good), it does offer a point worth examining. Great hardware is the minimum starting point in the smartphone market these days, and it doesn’t get anyone’s blood racing by itself. As a piece of hardware, the Google phone, dubbed the Nexus One according to employees, had better be on par with an iPhone. If not, as we have seen time and again with would-be competitors, it will be a non-starter.

Let’s assume Google’s phone is tip-top in the hardware department. What sells smartphones these days has as much to do with the software running the phone and the applications available as the hardware. Again, Apple (AAPL) leads the pack by a wide margin with its mobile apps store.

Google’s open-source mobile OS Android has been getting mostly good reviews, especially in its latest incarnation running on Motorola’s (MOT) Droid phone. What Google needs to do, however, is get more Android phones out there to attract more developers and get the critical application mass it needs.

What has everyone most excited at the moment is the (rumored) prospect that Google will sell its Nexus One as an unlocked, carrier-agnostic piece of gear starting in January. Fine, as long as the phone is still relatively cheap. If Google comes out with a $500 unlocked phone, it will fade as quickly as all of Nokia’s similar unlocked and pricey efforts.

But if Google sells its phone contract-free for the same $199 the iPhone sells for (with a two-year AT&T (T) contract) it will have a monster on its hands. How could that happen? Google, rather than a carrier could subsidize the phone, and make up the cost via mobile advertising (it just bought AdMob), or maybe just take a hit to build a market. Google can certainly afford it. Either way, Android gets very huge, very fast, and that is what Google really wants.

Would that upset Google’s roster of current Android customers, including Motorola, Samsung and some of the wireless carriers? Sure it would, but this isn’t about the old-school wireless ecosystem, it’s about the mobile Web and Google’s designs to own it. If Google wants it, it needs to step up. If not? Those pigs-in-a-blanket sure look good.

The long-rumored gPhone has surfaced, but no one can agree on what it means

The purported Google phone. Photo: Cory O'Brien

Google (GOOG) announced on its mobile blog Saturday what dozens of staffers had already leaked: the company has given employees around the world free handsets running its Android mobile operating system. The idea, according to the official report, is to have Google's own people test various advanced features and offer feedback to the company's designers — a process known in the business as "dogfooding" (as in "eating your own dogfood").

Not surprisingly, given Google's financial clout and the power it wields over the Internet, the experiment has launched a storm of speculation about what it means. As we sort through the theories, we count at least nine ways of looking at the Google phone:

1. Google is in the process of designing an unlocked cellphone that it plans to sell directly to the public online — bypassing the mobile carriers and brick-and-mortar retailers — sometime next year. This is the line TechCrunch took first and the Wall Street Journal has picked up, citing unnamed sources "familiar with the matter."  This theory underlies much of the theorizing that follows.
2. Google has watched with dismay as smartphone makers tweak the Android OS to suit their needs, fragmenting the software ecosystem and scaring off developers. "By putting its stake in the ground," writes GigaOm's Om Malik, "the company is hoping that it doesn’t make the mistake that Microsoft made by dragging its feet in releasing Zune and ceding the market to Apple’s iPod."
3. Apple (AAPL) has finally met its match in a competitor that has the resources, the partners and the staying power to challenge the iPhone. This, finally, is the real iPhone killer.
4. The iPhone, despite the failure of AT&T's (T) network to keep up with bandwidth demands in high-profile urban markets, continues to sell like crazy. Google realizes it has to move fast or the game will be lost.
5. A Google phone sold without a subsidy from the mobile carriers would be prohibitively expensive — at least $400, and probably more like $500 or $600, according to Ian Betteridge's back of the envelope calculations. (See his comments here.) A carrier like T-Mobile (DT) could sell the same phone for a fraction of the price.
6. Google could subsidize the phone out of its own pocket, perhaps giving it away for free to drive more traffic to its revenue-producing ads — a strategy that's worked for nearly every other project in Google Labs.
7. If Google were to try to sell a smartphone below cost, the company would be facing a 21st century version of the Microsoft (MSFT) antitrust trials, and the start of a long, slow decline.
8. Google is about to alienate the very hardware manufacturers it's counting on to carry the Android flag. Why would customers buy a Motorola (MOT) Droid, for example, when they could get the official Android smartphone from Google?
9. Google has no intention of making its own hardware. The so-called Google phone is actually  the HTC Passion (AKA Bravo), an Android 2.1 smartphone set for U.S. release by T-Mobile in January. The "dogfooding" exercise is exactly what Google said it was — a way to test a bunch of advanced Android features on a friendly user base before they go public.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Motorola targets young men with its most testosterone-heavy TV commercial yet

Screen shot from Droid ad. Image: Motorola

Someone had fun writing this ad copy:

Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It's not a princess. It's a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do.

The new Droid commercial that debuted in prime-time Thursday night (and is pasted below the fold) opened a new front in Motorola (MOT) and Verizon's (VZ) $100 million ad campaign to take market share from Apple's (AAPL) iPhone

Earlier commercials had appealed to the fragile male ego with icons of masculinity: stealth bombers, heavyweight fighters, rock-crushing machinery.

This one goes after the competition by painting it — and its users — as effeminate.

Source: YouGov's BrandIndex surveys. Margin of error: +/- 2%

It's a strategy as old as the schoolyard, and it seems to be working — at least on one side of the yard. A new YouGov BrandIndex survey taken Thursday shows Motorola's buzz rising relative to Apple's and Research in Motion's (RIMM) among men 18 and older. And the company seems to be on track in its stated goal of selling 1 million Droids by New Years.

It remains to be seen whether it has burned its bridges to the other half of the market in the process.

Below: The latest ad.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Going after AT&T's network and Apple's iPhone could prove an expensive proposition

Source: Motorola

Broadpoint AmTech analyst Mark McKechnie's estimate that Motorola (MOT) sold 100,000 Droid smartphones last weekend has been getting a lot of attention, although nobody's quite sure what to make of it. McKechnie called the number "encouraging." Nielsen's Roger Entner found it "a little troubling." IDC's Ramon Llama said it was "nothing to shrug off."

Part of the problem is that everybody is comparing Motorola to Apple (AAPL), which sold 270,000 iPhones in its first two days of sales in 2007 and 1 million iPhone 3GSs in three days last June. The consensus on the Street is that Motorola will do well to sell 1 million Droids by the end of the year.

The other problem — and the reason Nielsen's Entner is so troubled — is that the ground had been softened for the Droid by a carpet-bombing ad campaign, the biggest in Verizon's (VZ) history. According to Ad Age's Rita Chang, the carrier has budgeted $100 million to support the Droid, most of it to be spent before the end of the year.

You can do the math.

How can Verizon afford to spend $100 per sale for a $199 (after $100 rebate) phone it is already subsidizing to the tune of hundreds of dollars apiece?

Source: AT&T

My theory is that the real purpose of Verizon's campaign is not to attack the iPhone or even to sell Droids. The carrier's true enemy is AT&T (T), to which it has been hemorrhaging subscriber share ever since the iPhone arrived.

Note that the iPhone only appears briefly in the "there's a map for that" TV ads that targeted AT&T's nationwide coverage. Verizon's latest TV campaign is even gentler, as if the iPhone could leave the island of misfit toys if it only had a better 3G network.

"Makes sense if you want the iPhone to be on your shelves one day," says a former advertising executive who watches Apple closely. "Push the Droid (without comparing it to the iPhone), but push your network as better than AT&T, and hope you gain enough traction with it to help persuade Cupertino that coming on board would be a good thing."

The contract that made AT&T the iPhone's exclusive U.S. carrier is reported to be expiring in 2010. According to AppleInsider, Apple has already signed up Taiwanese suppliers to build a hybrid "worldmode" iPhone that would run on Verizon's network.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Motorola and Verizon invited comparisons, and that's what they got

Photos: Motorola, Apple

The Droid lands in stores Friday, and on Thursday the heavyweight reviewers — which is to say the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg and the New York Times' David Pogue — weighed in.

Given that Motorola (MOT) and Verizon (VZ) pitched the Droid in its first TV ad as everything Apple's (AAPL) and AT&T's (T) iPhone was not, it was perhaps inevitable that every reviewer so far, including these two, treated its arrival as a grudge match.

Mossberg's review is positive but tepid — especially the video version. He plods through the comparisons item by item like a slightly boring homework assignment. His top-line summary:

"While it has some significant drawbacks, I regard it as a success overall. It's the best super-smart phone Verizon offers, the best Motorola phone I've tested and the best hardware so far to run [Google's (GOOG)] Android. I can recommend the Droid to Verizon loyalists who have lusted for a better smart phone, but don't want to switch networks." (link)

Pogue being Pogue has more fun with the assignment, even running a Twitter contest to come up with a new term for these newfangled gizmos. (He's going with "app phones"; Mossberg calls them "super-smart phones.") Pogue's bottom line:

Since Verizon seems to want a Droid-iPhone faceoff, here it is: the Droid wins on phone network, customizability, GPS navigation, speaker, physical keyboard, removable battery and openness (free operating system, mostly uncensored app store). The iPhone wins on simplicity, refinement, thinness, design, Web browsing, music/video synching with your computer, accessory ecosystem and quality/quantity of the app store." (link)

For a more thorough comparison, written by someone who actually seems to care, check out developer Greg Kumparak's 2,500 word review in TechCrunch. His conclusion: "At this point, I honestly feel that either choice would make any sane person incredibly happy."

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Meet the creative director who named a generation of Apple products

Photo: Apple

The TBWA\Chiat\Day creative team was horrified in 1998 when Steve Jobs pulled back a cloth and revealed the bulbous teardrop that came to be known as the Bondi-Blue iMac.

But then Jobs wasn't so crazy at first about the name they proposed for it.

No one had ever seen anything like the new computer, veteran creative director Ken Segall tells Cult of Mac's Leander Kahney in an exclusive interview published Tuesday evening.

"We were pretty shocked but we couldn’t be frank," Segall recalls. "We were guarded. We were being polite, but we were really thinking, 'Jesus, do they know what they are doing?' It was so radical."

Segall eventually came up with "iMac," a name that connected the original 1984 Macintosh with the rapidly expanding Internet. But Jobs took some convincing.

Below the fold, excerpts from the story as Kahney tells it:

Photo: Ken Segall

Jobs said he was betting the company on the machine and so it needed a great name. He suggested one at the meeting, Segall says, but it was terrible. It would “curdle your blood.” …

Segall says he came back with five names. Four were ringers, sacrificial lambs for the name he loved — iMac. “It referenced the Mac, and the “i” meant internet,” Segall says. “But it also meant individual, imaginative and all the other things it came to stand for.” It “i” prefix could also be applied to whatever other internet products Apple was working on.

Jobs rejected them all, including iMac.

“He didn’t like iMac when he saw it,” Segall says. “I personally liked it, so I went back again with three or four new names, but I said we still like ‘iMac.”

He said: ‘I don’t hate it this week, but I still don’t like it.’”

Segall didn’t hear any more about the name from Jobs personally, but friends told him that Jobs was silk-screening the name on prototypes of the new computer. He was testing it out to see if it looked good.

“He rejected it twice but then it just appeared on the machine,” Segall says, laughing. “He never formally accepted it.” …

Segall is delighted that iMac grew on Jobs. “It’s a cool thing. You don’t get to name too many products, and not ones that become so successful. It’s really great. I’m really delighted. It became the nomenclature for so many other products. Millions of people see that work.”

Segall says over the last few years, the debate about dropping the “i” prefix has come up several times at Apple. “They’ve asked: ‘Should the company drop the “i”?’ But there’s a desire to keep it consistent: iMac, iPod, iPhone. It’s not as clean as it should be, but it works.”

You can read more of the interview, including the story of how the "Think Different" campaign got started, at Cult of Mac here.

Also worth visiting: Segall's own blog, Observatory, with his commentary on everything from Motorola's (MOT) Cliq ads (he loves them) to Research in Motion's (RIMM) appropriation of The Beatles' All You Need Is Love (hates it; "they’ve successfully broken the gall barrier.").

Kahney, the former news editor of Wired.com, is the author of several books about Apple (AAPL), including most recently Inside Steve's Brain.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

And a few things we don't love about Motorola's forthcoming Google-powered phone.

Droid does (and doesn't) wow our writer.

The Droid is a fierce phone. Motorola's newest smartphone has a number of features that match and even best its biggest competitor, Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. It has a fast processor. It’s got a large display with almost double the resolution of the iPhone as well as a slide-out keyboard. And it’s got a five megapixel camera with flash and zoom and a video camera that renders your Flip camera unnecessary. Add to that a new sharp-edged form factor straight out of Star Trek. And the marketers have given their campaign a bunch of attitude with their “iDon’t” commercial that pits the Droid directly against the iPhone.

But is any of that going to be enough to woo iPhone fans to Motorola's new device? As I wrote in a September feature, the company has a lot riding on it. Thanks to a massive marketing push by Verizon Wireless (VZ), plenty of excitement is building for the Droid’s November 6 launch. But just a year ago there was a lot of similar hype around RIM's Storm, which was also going to take on the iPhone. Though initial sales were pretty good, the smartphone received lukewarm reviews.

Motorola's new offering will have to prove itself once the hype dies down. And with so many Android-powered devices coming to market in the next few months, it may be hard for the Droid, which Verizon Wireless will sell for $199 after an $100 rebate with a two-year contract, to stand out.

Fortune received a Droid to test this morning. I powered it up, and a monotone robotic voice uttered “Droid.” Here are five things I think Motorola (MOT) has done right with the Droid…and a couple features I miss.

1. THE NAME Motorola’s first smartphone had too many monikers. Launched on T-Mobile (DT) and powered by Google's (GOOG) Android, it was called the Cliq with Motoblur. The Cliq was the name of the phone and Motoblur was the social software. The launch event left some members confused, and minutes after, I asked him directly whether he thought the jumble of names had been confusing. Jha agreed it was confusing, saying, “The feedback is good but it has taken ten or fifteen minutes to have the ‘aha’ moment.” He said Motorola would improve, and it’s clear that with the launch of the Droid, it has. In one syllable, the “Droid” signals a new type of device.
2. THE KEYBOARD Motorola’s slide-out keyboard is durable and intuitive. It doesn’t have the loud click that the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, had. (Try checking your emails on the sly during a meeting, and that clicking sound will blow your cover.) A toggle pad to the right of the keyboard allows you to navigate much like a BlackBerry trackball. In fact it’s the keyboard that makes the device an attractive alternative to RIM’s BlackBerry for the enterprise market. On November 2, a Citigroup analyst made headlines for cutting his ratings on RIM (RIMM) while upgrading Motorola after he reviewed the Droid.
3. GOOGLE MAPS NAVIGATION The Droid is the first phone to have Android 2.0, the newest version of Google’s operating system. There is not a lot that differentiates it from the earlier version, but these few changes have a substantial impact. This new product is one example. It’s a free beta version of a new navigation service (like TomTom’s or Garmin’s (GRMN)) that offers realtime directions, turn by turn, with Google Maps. My colleague Jon Fortt just wrote about paying $70 for a similar application for his iPhone.
4. APPLICATIONS Sure, the iPhone has nearly 100,000 applications and right now the Android Market sports just a tenth of that. But quality matters more than quantity. And with so many Android devices expected to go on sale in the next year, many developers are taking resources away from other operating systems to invest in Android applications. Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer saw a major boost in users after his iPhone application was featured heavily in Apple’s initial advertising campaign for its App Store. He estimates he added 100,000 users to the site, which he sold to Intuit (INTU) this fall for $170 million. Because his application is so popular, many companies have approached him to develop for their operating systems. “ Microsoft approached me seven times, and they’d offer free support like dedicated engineers,” he says. But Patzer prefers to concentrate his resources. When Mint.com releases its Android application in March, it will be the only other operating system he plans to support. “I’ll get a lot of leverage with so many devices being released,” he explains. “And the programming language is fairly straightforward."
5. SEARCH One of only four buttons at the base of the Droid’ screen is the magnifying glass icon that denotes search. It searches both the Internet and your contacts to compile information. Hold the icon down for a couple of seconds and the phone will prompt you to speak your query. I tried this with several names and each time, the phone actually returned search results for the correct name on first pass.

There are a few things I’ve come to expect in a smartphone that are absent in the Droid. For one, there’s no pinch zoom. Also, there are no “send” and “end” keys. Instead, the Droid offers four new buttons at its base. In addition to the search key, there is a home button, a menu button, and a back button.

But what I miss most is purely aesthetic. It’s black and heavy and sharp-edged. A smartphone is an incredibly personal device, and this one isn’t really my style.

Then again, last season I swore off horizontal stripes, and this year I’m wearing striped sweaters nearly every day.

New software transforms your phone into a GPS device – and a pretty good one, too

Navigon's MobileNavigator app for the iPhone has features some standalone units lack. Photo: Navigon.

As my wife will tell you, I have a comically bad sense of direction. I once got lost driving home from the mall.

This makes me a prime candidate for a GPS device. I’ve used a few for brief stints, mostly on long road trips, but never got into the habit of using one for everyday errands. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one, it’s a hassle to dig the thing out of the glove compartment. For another, entering an address on most of these things is a crazy-making experience.

My perspective changed recently, though, when I bought a new GPS unit for $70. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. I actually downloaded a GPS-based iPhone (AAPL) app for $70.

Yes, 70. Seven-zero. I’ll be the first to admit that it sounds crazy to pay that much for software that runs on a phone. The overwhelming majority of phone apps out there cost between 99 cents and $10.

Why would I pay so much for an iTunes download? Well, this directionally challenged consumer needed another GPS device. We had one in the newer car that my wife usually drives, where it did me absolutely no good. I had been compensating by using Google Maps (GOOG) on my phone to find my way to meetings in a pinch, but wasn’t comfortable – or safe – to keep glancing over to prepare for the next turn.

So in late August I took the plunge and went shopping for navigation software on the iTunes app store. At the time, there were two main options: TomTom’s app was $100; Navigon’s was on sale for $70. Both had gotten decent reviews, but I was drawn to Navigon’s for its ability to speak street names; rather than say, “Ahead, turn right,” it can say, “Ahead, turn right on Embarcadero.” It also has the bells and whistles we've come to expect from GPS units: points of interest, gas stations, restaurants. I decided to go with Navigon.

I was prepared to have serious buyer’s remorse. For $69.99 (plus another $30 for a windshield mount) this had to be good.

And it is. I’ve loved Navigon’s MobileNavigator software since I bought it. It’s actually better than the few standalone GPS units I’ve used. I can pull addresses from my phone’s contact list to set a destination and avoid the hassle of tapping through annoying menus. It shows me highway signs, indicates the best lanes to move into, and warns when I’m pushing too far past the speed limit. Best of all, my phone is always in my pocket – so I have navigation help even when I’m not in my car. On a hectic day trip to Southern California recently, I used MobileNavigator in a rental car to find my way from LAX to an out-of-the-way spot in Santa Monica. (Next time, though, I'll have to remember to bring the iPhone charger; by the time I got home, the iPhone's battery was all but dead.)

From the look of things, it won’t be long before a lot more phones start doubling as GPS devices. Smartphone customers seem to see value in the software. A few examples: MobileNavigator (now $90) is the #3 top grossing app on iTunes. AT&T (T) has begun selling a navigation service that works on dozens of phones in its lineup. And Motorola’s (MOT) Droid, a smartphone that’s arriving next week on Verizon’s (VZ) network, comes with free turn-by-turn directions via the latest version of Google’s Android operating system.

That’s not so great for companies like TomTom and Garmin (GRMN), who make a lot of money selling standalone GPS devices – their stock prices took a hit this week on the announcement of Google’s free software. But for wayward travelers like me, GPS navigation in phones is a killer app.

follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jonfortt

Apple has 93,000 to Android's 11,300. But how many applications do you really need?

Photos: Motorola, Apple

In the flurry of quickie reviews that appeared overnight after Wednesday's unveiling of Motorola's (MOT) Droid — Google (GOOG) and Verizon's (VZ) latest answer to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone — little has been said about how the two platforms stack up in terms of apps.

At first glance, it seems an unfair comparison. Apple has spent a small fortune promoting those famous 85,000 iPhone applications — a number than has since grown to roughly 93,000 and is on track to hit 100,000 in a matter of weeks.

Source: AndroidLib.com

But it's not as if there are no apps for the Droid. As of Thursday morning there were 11,284, according AndroidLib.com's unofficial count of the offerings in Google's Android Market. Moreover, that number too is growing by the thousands. Android developers added 2,333 new apps in September and another 2,431 so far in October.

To be sure, the App Store is growing faster, and has been from the start. Android's Market has been open for business since Feb. 2009; when the App Store was eight months old, it was adding nearly 7,000 apps per month.

But how many apps does a smartphone really need? 10,000 may well be enough to serve Motorola and Verizon's needs, not to mention their users'.

Besides, it's early days yet — way too early to know how the Android-iPhone face-off will shake out.

In many ways, it's a battle reminiscent of the PC operating system wars of the 1990s, with Google's Android playing the role of Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows. Like Microsoft, Google is offering an OS (albeit one that is license-free) that will run on multiple vendors' hardware. Apple, as usual, is being Apple, keeping tight control of both the operating system and the hardware it runs on. Only this time, it's Apple that was first to win the heart and minds of the developers.

But Google, the Droid and the other Android phones in the works could still catch up. At least one analyst — Gartner's Ken Dulaney — believes they will. He's on record predicting that the Android OS will overtake the iPhone in terms of global market share by 2012.

The Droid is scheduled to go on sale Friday, Nov. 6, for $199 after rebate, the same price as a 16 gig iPhone 3GS.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]