Continuing on Wednesday's train of thought ... I had an opportunity to ask Scott Webster, one of the guys at AndroidGuys.com, what he thought Nokia's purchase of and plans to open the entire Symbian platform mean to the mobile OS market as a whole and to Android in particular.

Considering he's an AndroidGuy, of course his first reaction is that it signals Android's arrival:

There's a lot of people who are calling this an Android killer. To me, that just confirms that Android will be a force to be reckoned with. Once you have "killer" attached, you're established.

But that doesn't mean that Android developers -- or LiMo developers, for that matter -- can rest on their laurels, he says. This is just the beginning of a mobile revolution, and Nokia's move is exactly what needs to happen for customers. From here on, all the mobile platform vendors/foundations will need to "keep a foot on the gas." Giving customers other options, as Nokia is doing, won't hurt Google's Android; it will merely force developers to up their game.

As for exactly where Android will stand in the market, Webster says the Google platform needs to see itself on half a dozen handset models by next year. The Google name can only help that effort, especially here in the U.S., because it's so much bigger than Nokia or Symbian. And Webster agrees that being earlier to market is to Android's advantage as well. The OpenSymbian-based devices aren't expected to make an appearance until 2010.