Mobile executives spar over iPhone

not be possible on the closed iPhone environment. Whether Android's open-source model will work out well is uncertain, but it should become more clear pretty quickly, Altman said.

"I would guess a month post-launch of Android, you will have a feel of how much people are going to follow the spirit of one stack that works with everything," Altman said.

As for Symbian, Nokia's Rivas emphasized that the transition to the open-source platform won't happen overnight. But he acknowledged that there is another major step Nokia has to take to generate interest at the software epicenter of Silicon Valley.

"Once I have a collection of phones here in the U.S. market that you guys are willing to hit, suddenly the whole value proposition changes for you," Rivas said.