New Android OS ensures Google dominance

Though Android powers the lion's share of superphones, Google's mobile OS won its enormous market share by being widely available across many phones, many carriers and many nations, often at prices that would give Apple accountants a laugh. The features of the OS were decent enough to be competitive, but few ever sang of their beauty and grace.

Now Android is attempting to justify its ascendancy with a head-to-toe software revision, and its competitors should be afraid. If Google's previously frumpy, inconsistent OS was enough to gain majority smartphone market share, what's to stop this elegant, intelligent update from solidifying that dominance?

When the news hit, I went over many of the new features of Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich. Taken altogether, they not only represent Android once again meeting or beating the features of competitors. For the first time, they represent a desire by Android's keepers to unify look-and-feel throughout the OS, to have a single design language, much like that of iOS or Windows Phone. In fact, you could say that the new Android borrows equally from both Apple and Microsoft, to make a product that is arguably stronger than both.