If you want to make the claim that the carriers are likely to duke it out and deliver any net value to the end-user, you're going to have to make a much stronger case than handwaving about competition. We're already talking about wireless carriers, so the subject of market failure shouldn't be alien to your frame of reference.
The only material improvement I see in the last five years is the market power that Apple has managed to steal from them, which it's put to mostly-good use.
Until Google is willing to start throwing its weight around with the user experience, Android represents no net gain to my thinking. But Google can't even enforce minimal backward compatibility or timely updates to its hardware partners, and is now running actively in reverse, painting a smiley-face on the carriers' opening up their own balkanized app stores. How does that serve Android developers or users?
My point is that the "competitive market" you'd applauding was designed by the carriers with the specific goal of preventing anyone from ever doing what Apple did.
That Apple was able to do it was marvelous, but it was also stupendously unlikely: a combination of the willingness to enter an unpromising market, the ability to pull it off, and the timing to convince a weakened Cingular to let them produce a phone without undue interference. It had never happened before, and Android doesn't make it more likely to happen again -- quite the opposite, really.
My argument is that "Markets! Yay!" is not an argument. Most markets require some regulation, and some luck, to function optimally. This particular market needs more of both.
Google's strategy with Android is to surrender complete control to the carriers. This is a consequence of them using an open source license that doesn't have GPLv3 style protections to ensure continued openness. Apple is the only company that we have seen in recent years do anything to weaken the carrier oligopoly. They probably aren't the only ones who have tried, but they are the only ones who have succeeded publicly. Thus it is entirely fair to say that Apple is the only company capable of creating competition in this market, so far.
The only material improvement I see in the last five years is the market power that Apple has managed to steal from them, which it's put to mostly-good use.
Until Google is willing to start throwing its weight around with the user experience, Android represents no net gain to my thinking. But Google can't even enforce minimal backward compatibility or timely updates to its hardware partners, and is now running actively in reverse, painting a smiley-face on the carriers' opening up their own balkanized app stores. How does that serve Android developers or users?