Francisco Jeronimo of IDC expects Android to grow around 420 per cent to a total of 3.6m units worldwide in 2009. Why are operators keen on Android? He says..

“Operators want to balance power between OSs in order to keep control of the market”

“Android is a free OS, it’s a sufficient mature platform for most operators and vendors, has a powerful brand behind with all Google’s services integrated and it has a good touchscreen user interface”

So why are some operators seeking to remove Google specific services?