[edderly]

Even if you take that argument at face value, do you think anyone could just have done that?

There are enough failed and feeble mobile OS vendors out there (Symbian, RIM, Palm, Microsoft) to prove that doing what Android has done is hard.

[001sky]

At some stage, it takes huge talent to follow in the footsteps certain pathbreakers. At leasts successfully.

Even if android did nothing but 'copy apple' they created a second player in the space on Apple's level.

If you think this is a trivial task -- look at RIM.

The creation of viable choice and a establishment of business model that hasn't (yet) forced the implosion of the platform, is a huge amount of work even of one were to abstact away any "groundbreaking originality" (whatever that means anyway) in the platform.