Great analaysis of Apple's strategic position relative to Android by Daniel Eran Dilger. He's got a real zinger in this article:
Google is successfully copying Apple, but it's copying the wrong decade.
Some other highlights:
The real problem for Google is not that it is ineffectually copying Microsoft's Zune, but that Android is actually copying Apple's miserable history of the Mac System Software from the early 1990s. Just as with the half decade of tepid updates of Apple's System 7, Google has largely just rolled in features invented by hobbyist users.
just like the Old Apple, Google is following the advice of those who thought Microsoft-style OS licensing was the only way to sell technology. The problem is that Microsoft-style licensing has only ever worked for Windows, and it only worked when Windows had a virtual monopoly that restrained all competition. Android doesn't have a monopoly over mobile devices, and it isn't holding back Apple from bringing products to market or selling them. Not at all.
Google's Android shares much more in common with Apple's failed Mac OS licensing program from the early 1990s than Microsoft Windows. Apple once struggled to compete against its own licensees, couldn't ask for enough licensing money to justify its engineering costs and faced stiff competition from an entrenched competitor with a much stronger platform. Now Google does.