The whole openness discussion is so little inside baseball to me, and I don't know that the consumer impact will be all that great. There's a point of diminishi

The whole openness discussion is so little inside baseball to me, and I don't know that the consumer impact will be all that great. There's a point of diminishing returns when the consumer has -too- much choice. They will just get confused. Of the millions who are buying smartphones from any company, I tend to think only a small percentage care about the types of things we love to debate here. I would say that the main reasons for a consumer (and they vastly outnumber us nerds) to buy a smartphone are: * make a call * send/receive texts * send/receive e-mails * surf the web * take pictures * look pretty * do the facebook * have some sort of mapping/gps * have some sort of handsfree * have decent battery life And guess what, just about --every-- smartphone out there will satisfy that wish list, and do a pretty damned good job of it. Openness? Number of Apps? Closed environment? Jailbreaking? Rooting? Nitpicky UI details? Only nerds care about that stuff.