Android was not written as a general-purpose OS, it's a mobile-centric API/OS optimized for low footprint and low CPU. Some of those concerns translate to a net

Android was not written as a general-purpose OS, it's a mobile-centric API/OS optimized for low footprint and low CPU. Some of those concerns translate to a netbook/tablet environment, a lot of them don't, but IMO Android would have to have a significant re-write to become a full-fledged rich client OS that developers would want to write for. The iPhone/iPad gap is a lot smaller because both were built on top of an OSX and Cocoa-derived core that is general purpose.