iDroid Wars on Gillmor Gang
The Gillmor Gang debated the virtues and otherwise of the smartphone's latest pretender to the iPhone crown: Droid. Michael Arrington led the Droid's faction, with a QVC-like enthusiasm for the power of Any Phone That Runs Google Voice.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two weeks after MobileCrunch put the iPhone 3GS and Motorola's Droid through a head-to-head comparison, the argument moved from spec sheets to personalities: the Gillmor Gang devoted an episode to whether Droid deserves the 'iPhone killer' framing, with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington playing chief advocate. His position is consistent with his own history — he documented quitting the iPhone over Google Voice back in August, so his case for 'any phone that runs Google Voice' rests on service access rather than hardware.
First-order effects
- Droid gains its most prominent blogger-champion at the moment of its launch window, with Arrington reframing the phone's appeal around Google Voice availability instead of screen, keyboard, or camera specs.
- The debate hands Apple's critics a ready-made talking point: a concrete service (Google Voice) that works unimpeded on Droid and was contentious enough to drive a well-known iPhone user away.
Second-order effects
- Handset makers competing with the iPhone are pushed to differentiate on which services run freely on their devices, reinforcing the same-day CrunchGear framing of handset makers living in Google's world — the OS owner, not the manufacturer, controls the differentiating features.
- Commentary shows like the Gillmor Gang become part of the competitive machinery itself, since a single influential advocate can shift which attribute — openness versus polish — the Droid-versus-iPhone narrative turns on.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, smartphone rivalry settles into a platform war fought at the service layer, where Google's grip on the software stack gives every Android handset a shared weapon against Apple regardless of who builds the hardware.
The trend: Smartphone competition in late 2009 is shifting from device specifications to platform services, with Google's software stack becoming the wedge Android advocates press against the iPhone.