I've been a serious smartphone user since the category was created. I've had every mobile OS and many handsets. Of everything I've had, I prefer Android by a very wide margin. That said I have a few concerns about it's future.
1) Apple has such a cult like following they have a head start in terms of being able to sell anything to their fanboys and girls, as well as the general public.
Being perceived as cool, does it in most cases. The massive momentum they have presently is quite amazing. That they could take something as simple as an iPad and sell the numbers they do, proves that more than anything, the ever arrogant, egotistical, condescending Steve Jobs can sell anything.
Also their stuff is so simple that it takes no thinking. As much as I detest the locked down ecosystem they have it's working to make them filthy rich which further strengthens them.
Finally it seems as though no matter what Apple does they get great press and it just really irritates me that even bad engineering like the crappy antenna on the iPhone 4, blows over quickly and they keep selling them with no consequences. I speak from experience having an iPhone 4 and the phone is terrible.
2) Fragmentation.
I hate to even write that word these days, because Apple's used it so much to trash Android. And you know what happens when something is said frequently, the press picks it up and it never goes away.
Unlike Apple the news around Android and overall "noise" in the blogosphere hasn't been that positive over the last week or so. As much as I hate to admit it, Jobs is charismatic and gets positive attention. We have no counterpart on the Google Android side of things, so even with all else being equal we are underdogs.
Frankly I see it not so much as fragmentation even though is a classic sense that could be argued. I see it as choices. Lots of different handsets is good and the only real issue is so many versions of Android on the street (so to speak) that some phones go back to 1.6 and some have the latest 2.2, 2.3 or higher.
I hope these recent moves that Google is making will reign in the various handset makers but that's a really tough task. If the Android group can get focused on the same version and sort it out well. Get it into the devices that are being rolled out all at the same time, then we have a unified experience for Android users and that is just what we need.
I want nothing more than to see Android be wildly successful over the long haul and the sooner the better.