The only thing that can touch iPhone fever?

I’m wondering about the HTC Dream and the Android issue. FierceWireless are wondering too:

Another day, another HTC Dream rumor. Today the “unofficial” blog T-Mobile online is reporting that T-Mobile will begin taking preorders for HTC’s Android-based device, the Dream, on Sept. 17. The phone will be available to T-Mobile USA subscribers for $150, much less than the initial rumored price of $400. New customers will be able to purchase the phone in October.

Google’s Android could garner near-iPhone levels of fever if they’re able to deliver a working operating system and decent experience.

My view on this changes like the weather here in the UK — i.e. hourly. Sometimes I think that a billion dollar behemoth such as Google must know what it’s doing. Has bought the right people. Has deployed the right attention and effort. Other times I’m of the view echoed by a lot of the mobile industry insiders I meet — that Google knows ‘F-all’ (a direct quote from one C-Level exec) about the mobile marketplace and ‘wouldn’t know a working mobile telecoms stack if it came up and slapped it in the street’.

When I begin ruminating on the matter, I think that, well, yes,… Google knew F-all about search until it got into it. It knew nothing about email, too. Until it decided to launch Gmail. And mobile is the way ahead. We’re all going mobile. Maybe they’re actually serious.

Or, and here we go again with the second guessing, maybe they’re just making noise about Android to get the attention and the buy-in of the major operators and handset manufacturers. That’s another popular perspective.

Whatever the viewpoint, this is precisely what we need in the industry. Competition.

It really starts to get interesting when you look at how T-Mobile USA is reacting to competition by launching it’s own application store. Plug in an Android device (imbued with the hopes being foist on to it by many) and now you’re cooking.

We shall see.

I’m hoping to talk to the lady that launched the T-Mobile apps store this week.