I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. From the sounds of it it's nice to use, is fast and responsive and generally does what most people will want quite well.

I can see many many people being more than happy with a Windows phone

He didn't dismiss it, or speculate at all on how other people would be happy with it.

He said it lacked a feature important to him.

I don't know that phone vendors have really wanted the kind of work that they have to do with Android. I mean HTC have embraced it, but most of the other manufacturers would rather have more work done by the OS. Once you get pegged as an 'x' phone, be it Android or Windows 7 then that's what user expectations are. Android is developed like a white label operating system but Google is marketing it like a consumer one and I don't think it works.

Google can't market as well as Apple. What Google is good at is making software that works better at a particular task. Very occasionally, something they make catches on.

>It is the openness of Android that has helped it to attain a large market share and I feel that MS by using a semi-open strategy will soon land Windows Phone 7 into the deadpool.

I agree with until this part. I actually think that MS is trying to get the best of both worlds (the controlled user experience of iOS with the choice/variety of Android) and as far as I can tell, it's working.

Actually Android isn't open, haven't you been paying attention ;-)