Is Android Poised To Overtake iPhone's Mobile Dominance?

The first quarter of this year has been dominated by the mobile market - in particular the success of the iPad launch, even though no one has had the chance to use it yet, and Android positioning itself as a worthwhile competitor the Apple's mobile OS. 

Now it looks like Android is set to overtake the iPhone sooner rather than later, at least according to this mobile traffic graph from James Governor's blog.

Android enthusiasts are bound to be excited about this and they're right to be. For the average Java developers, writing an Android application is much easier than an iPhone application. With these statistics, it's a fair assumption that the Android marketplace could generate a healthy income for your application, once you have the right idea.

All the iPad hype has helped to fuel tablet sales too - a market that never quite found its feet before now. The biggest fuss in the Android space is the WePad, which looks like it's going to give the iPad a run for it's money. 

To me the most important thing isn't that Android overtakes iPhone, or vice versa. It's that the software industry is an exciting and dynamic industry to be in, as noted in a recent TechCrunch story written by Marc Benioff:

The future of our industry now looks totally different than the past. It looks like a sheet of paper, and it’s called the iPad. It’s not about typing or clicking; it’s about touching. It’s not about text, or even animation, it’s about video. It’s not about a local disk, or even a desktop, it’s about the cloud. It’s not about pulling information; it’s about push. It’s not about repurposing old software, it’s about writing everything from scratch (because you want to take advantage of the awesome potential of the new computers and the new cloud—and because you have to reach this pinnacle). Finally, the industry is fun again.

I would go as far as saying that now is the best time to be developing software. There's so many technology opportunities out there, and the rise of the mobile industry means that you can reach more people than ever with your applications.