Google's manager of mobile platforms told attendees at the Emerging Communications Conference that the forthcoming mobile phones running on Android are more flexible than Apple's proprietary handsets because developers can easily create applications for the open Android platform. Miner said the first Android handsets will hit the market late this year.

"It's great that people are finally building tools so all of these third-party applications can be built and get out there, (but) there are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone--at least at the moment," Miner said.

"Once you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone," Miner said.

For more on Miner's comments:
- read this article from InformationWeek