No less than Google’s VP Rich Miner is letting it be known that he expects Android sales to outstrip those of its more fancied rival the Apple iPhone. This despite sales of 4 million iPhones thus far, projected sales of 10 million by year end and an SDK that was downloaded 100,000 times in its first four days of release - explain sir.

“Once you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there’s a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone”, said Miner. With both SDK’s out Miner suggests that the Apple’s restrictions hinder its ability to provide rich applications, a failing not shared by Google’s more open approach, “There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can’t do with the iPhone at least at the moment,” added Miner.

With the Android SDK having quietly accrued 750,000 downloads since February, Rich Miner may have a point, suggesting if he were a developer “I’d certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I’d be developing for both platforms.”

With Apple’s huge satisfaction ratings and market penetration can an Android phone made by the ailing Motorola really match the lust factor of the iconic Apple?