Made official today Google announced their partnership with a lot of tech companies to come up with an Open Handset Alliance to build mobile phones on an open source software. Sure, you will be able to run Apache, but will it hurt Apple?

iPhone Interface

What Apple is counting on and rightfully so is that it still dominates when it comes to the interface. The user interface and software interface of the iPhone are what make it the leader and while Google and their partners can get out there in open source land will they be able to bring the same feeling to a gPhone?

Probably not.

By the time the gPhone or Zune Phone launches Apple will have opened up the platform for the iPhone, brought in better hardware and in be dominating in the iPhone/iPod market.

Sync Secret Sauce

Another thing that the iPhone has going for it are the 500,000,000 installs of iTunes that can sync with it. Syncing up your phone or PDA has always been painful but not with the iPhone and unless Google thinks they will do it all over the air (slow/no offline mode) iTunes will have a leg up.

Bring the Competition

Nothing makes the market better than a little competition and it is good to see Google get into the game and challenge Apple on all sorts of fronts from integration to applications.