Although Google’s Android operating system was unveiled in 2007, it took over a year for the first Android device (the Motorola Droid high-end smartphone) to reach the market, in October 2008. By that time, the touchscreen euphoria started by Apple with its iPhone device, was peaking and gaining market share while giants like Nokia were sleeping.

At that time, the Android phone not-so-smartly called Droid, allowed Motorola to save itself from the sinking boat of the mobile phone losers. Simultaneously, the former dominant Samsung was jumping in the touchscreen bandwagon while LG and Sony-Ericsson started an assault towards the mi-range.

On the platform level however, this are quite differently. Until the iPhone, Nokia was single-handedly (almost) holding up the Symbian flag. Sony-Ericsson wasn’t helping much, Siemens had sank and Samsung barely scratched the surface in using Symbian on its devices. As a platform, Symbian never gain too much popularity among developers.

Windows Mobile did however, but since the writing on the wall said “Microsoft”, the platform was available only to few.

Things changed when Apple released the iPhone SDK, on the Cocoa platform and since the environment works on Mac (which is based on Unix), soon people “convinced” it to work on other Linux-types. The “cool” factor of the first device (the iPhone) is still making the SDK float, despite the platform limitation issue. A much stronger deterrent in Apple’s case is the choice of language: Objective-C. Objective-C is a grandson of C but with the added difficulty of a totally counter-intuitive syntax, which makes the learning curve steep.

This was the scene when Android came in. Google made Android open from the very first moment which means a lot of device makers hopped on board, starting with Motorola and continuing with HTC, Samsung and Acer. Surely, Archos and LG didn’t wait long.

Android’s advantage lays in the numbers (for they are many) and in the ease of working with the platform. Android SDK uses the Java structure and syntax and comes in a lighter pack than the iPhone SDK. In addition, the Android SDK works on any development platform through its IDE of choice: Eclipse. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux alike.

Between the two, Android has the upper hand. The many producers, the Google name, availability, access and ease of use. These are all working to bury Apple. However, there are also cons. Android suffers from poor performance (requiring more system resources to run: if the iPhone OS did great with a 500 Mhz processor, Android’s minimum for a decent performance is 768Mhz) and lack of style.

Sliding into the underdog’s position, Apple strikes back with its only remaining weapons: innovation and style. Will these be enough to help the iPhone battle the Androids? It will be tough, because the iPhone was and still is a heavily overpriced device while the new Androids attack both the middle and the upper categories and I’m sure many of those who could not afford the iPhone will definitely enjoy grabbing a HTC, LG or Samsung with Android.

The number of Android applications grows everyday and since they are distributed by Google, they are more than a match for Apple’s Store. It is hard to bet on a winner since this confrontation opposes two the most innovative IT companies of all: Google and Apple, but I dare to wager on Google.