Android & webOS Devices: Appealing but Not Market Changers

Palm and Google will sail the U.S. and Canadian smartphone waters starting next week, but their webOS and Android powered devices won’t help them capture the smartphone/mobile operating system seas.

The Android and webOS powered mobile phones/devices prospects in North America is a timely one. Rogers Wireless in Canada will start sales of HTC’s Magic and Touch devices next week. Sprint, meanwhile, begins sales of the much-ballyhooed Pre device from Palm, the comeback kid of the mobile device world on June 6th.

North American wireless operators are hoping to find high-margin, fast-selling alternatives to the BlackBerry and iPhone. Android devices are perceived by operators as lower-cost solutions for prosumers and consumers, which may be true. (Google for example doesn’t charge operators – its customers – a fee for the Android operating system which theoretically lowers the customer cost of acquisition for the operator).

That doesn’t make them best sellers. The smartphone market isn’t being held back by the cost of a mobile operating system license (though operators would prefer not to pay for it.) The cost a data plan, for example, is a greater inhibitor.

Instead, the operators will likely find the Palm/webOS and Android multi-purpose phones appeal to select North American prosumers (those generally speaking that use their devices for business and personal purposes.)

Consumers and enterprises will buy superior devices. The mach-zehnder modulatorwebOS/Pre and Android devices by many accounts seem capable, even intriguing, but are not seen as game changers despite the inclusion of intriguing features (e.g. the advertised webOS ability to integrate disparate calendar and contact information via the cloud).

To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the mobile operating systems or the devices. Quite the opposite. I suspect the form factors and many other appealing factors of the devices will make for many a happy Android and webOS device user.

However, the Android and webOS powered smartphones represent an evolution in the smartphone market, not a revolution. As a result, the webOS and Android camps will probably grow slowly over the next several years – not leapfrog the Apple/MacOS and RIM/BlackBerry OS camps in the United States or Canada.