As poor iPhone 4 product reviews buffet Apple Corp – specifically a seemingly inevitable recall to solve reception problems – the company is feeling the heat from Google’s Android platform, which is set to shine where Apple dominates: music and media.

Throughout the evolution of wireless phones, and the move into smartphones, music has been the “killer application”. This has been central to Apple’s success, because the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad are synched with one operating system, the iOS family. As a result, iTunes' has maintained its central role in managing music, applications and software updates. It’s easy, it works great, and it helps drive sales of iPhone and iPads.

But now music is mixed with video, and companies like Cisco Systems, which recently released the Cius media tablet for enterprises, are going with the Android OS. These next-generation media platforms are increasingly cloud-based, and will be the where the big players will be slugging it out over the next few years.

As it stands, Google is activating about 160,000 Android devices a day, a sure sign that service provider partnerships with big players like AT&T and Verizon are a success.

Meanwhile, Apple’s share price has been hit by a growing number of complaints about the latest iPhone. On Monday, Consumer Reports issued a statement saying it could not recommend the iPhone 4 for purchase due to widely-reported reception problems. Typical for Apple, the company has said nothing about any recall, with representatives unavailable for comment, though one now seems almost inevitable. To date there have been two official responses: one recommended that user not hold the phone in a way that covered the bottom left corner; and another claimed there was a software glitch that miscalculated the strength of wireless coverage in a given area.

With Apple dealing with bad press, and Microsoft lagging in the mobile space, it is up to Android to prove it can not only gain, but also hold onto, market share. To do that, Google may have to provide a content system similar in function to iTunes, but delivered from the cloud. Apple certainly appears to be behind the times in having iTune libraries reside in the local hard drives of personal computers.

We can expect, however, that Apple will also move to the cloud, whereupon we could see a battle of Olympian proportions. The thunderbolt will go to whoever successfully deploys a cloud-based music system first.

It may also simply go to Google because Apple is behaving much like the Apple of the 1980s, relying on a closed system just as the market is opening up. At present over a dozen manufacturers make mobile devices using the Android operating system, and the secondary application market is on fire. Should Android becomes the “platform of choice” for developers, Apple would have lost yesterday’s war all over again.