>>The only other player in the US will be Microsoft. We'll see what they do with WinPhone7.

Rumor is that MS intends to spend almost half-a-billion on marketing in the first year and is paying developers to write apps for it. Also that they don't aim to take customers from Android/iOS but to target business and claim some of the huge market shift from dumb phones.

IMHO available apps are important to people making a decision about a phone that is after all a personal item rather than a typical business application and inevitably will be used for more than just email etc. Presumably that's why MS is offering to pay developers to make sure there are plenty of apps. FWIW, iOS developers uploaded >500 new apps on the day the sdk became available without Apple having to do anything else. How does WinPhone compare? Well, the beta sdk has been around for a while but the official sdk release date is 16 September - today- with Marketplace apps accepted starting in October. So we'll soon see. They're already doing one thing smart: the promise of Halo for WinPhone will make people sit up and take notice. ;-)

>>Palm will be an albatross carried by HP.

LOL. Wouldn't be surprised if HP has bought the customer base and will ease them across to Android.