Sorry but no, most consumers couldn't care less whether a phone was open or not. Android's openness is only a significant factor for the tech community, which makes up a small (but vocal) fraction of the population. The things like "openness" that geeks live and die for is not even on the radar for most people.
Trouble is, those people get the flawed idea that their view is the dominant one because its what they see all the time on the tech blogs they visit (talk about your self-selection bias). However if it were true that the types of factors that power users demand were the deciding factor in a products success or failure we wouldn't b seeing the success of the iPhone or the Nintendo Wii that we have. Whether geeks like to admit it or not, most people aren't like them, most people don't have the same demands, needs or priorities than them. Doesn't mean they are right or wrong, they are just different. If phone makers can be succesful using Android, great, but the open-ness is not going to be a key factor in whether its a wide spread commerical success or not. If it were we'd all be running Linux and Open Office now, which isn't remotely near the way the world atually is.
