Droid born on date: 102909

Today Verizon and Motorola launched the first Android phone.  Here’s news from a guy who was there, Saul Hansell.

The sure-to-follow-marketing effort will leave us all wondering when Android will become self aware and decide to enslave the human race.

Regardless, I’m pretty darn excited about the launch actually.  Granted, not being a gadget guy, ironically enough, I’m not racing out to buy a new phone from Verizon any time soon.  But I am very excited about the implications.

One implication is that we’ll really need a framework for cross platform mobile app development if we didn’t already.  Winners here are likely to be Rhomobile who offers an open source moble app framework that allows developers to write once and work on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows and Symbian.  They are focused on enterprise software though.  It’s unclear as to there being demand in the enterprise for frameworks, but I’m rootin’ for ‘em!  The other likely winner is Nitobi who offers an open source framework called Phonegap.  It’s similar to Rhomobile but more geared toward consumer apps.  Useful?  Uh, totally/extremely/yup.  Monetizable? Jury out there as well.

Google and Apple will duke it out in the market.  I believe RIM will stay in the game.  Microsoft will spend a fortune trying to convince itself it is still in the game.  All this activity brews opportunity for the entrepreneurial class in Silicon Valley.  When titans fight, stuff falls out of the ring that can turn into awesome businesses.

That’s what I’m excited about.  I’ll keep my eye open and let you know if I find something.