A Warm Welcome for Android

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But Wi-Fi Army faces a more significant hurdle than enemy bullets: Android doesn't yet support Wi-Fi wireless technology. And the lack of support for Bluetooth means that Wojtowicz and his co-developers can't get going on a feature that would enable team members to strategize their moves using wireless headsets. Writing the game application "is not easy," Wojtowicz says. "But we are looking at it in the long run. Google has a lot of money to burn."

Attracting Young, Hip Developers

Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms at Google, says the company is trying to release a new iteration of the software each month, a breakneck pace in the industry where major versions of Windows Mobile come out once every two years. Google is also redoubling its efforts to be more responsive to developers. On Jan. 23, the company is hosting a developers shindig at its Googleplex headquarters. There are also plans for an online feedback system to allow developers to report bugs and request changes by Google's engineers.

The excitement around Android also highlights a generational split in the mobile developer community. For Jason Aaron, the decision to use Android and Apple's iPhone platform to develop his mobile application was a no brainer. Young, hip programmers he'd hired simply weren't interested in the mainstream wireless software platforms to write the code for What'sOpen, an application that tells people whether local businesses are open or closed. People coding for Symbian or Windows Mobile are "older, accountant-type developers," Aaron says. "IPhone and Android developers are cool. It's a youthful, social crowd that goes the other way. Are you going to be with Microsoft or the hip, cool Google and Apple (AAPL) crowd?"

Microsoft says it's not seeing mass developer defections. "I have not seen a difference" in developer interest in Windows Mobile, says Daniel Bouie, senior product manager for Microsoft's mobile communications business. "If you are looking to make money off of your software, the number of devices in the market and the strength of developer tools [that we offer] are going to be your No. 1 consideration." Indeed, Windows Mobile shipped on some 11 million devices last year, while Symbian shipped on 55 million through just the first nine months of 2007.

Tapping Idle Power

To beat those odds, Android programmers are trying to conceive of capabilities that have never been seen on mobile devices before. As Baris Karadogan, a venture capitalist with $1.5 billion Velocity Interactive Group, explains it, Apple took years to develop the iPhone, which took the wireless industry by storm in 2007 with novel features such as finger swiping. "Android (BusinessWeek.com, 11/5/07) enables people to quickly create new iPhones," Karadogan says.

Many of these new applications could be revolutionary, in part because Android may be adapted for more than cell phones. Google's Rubin points out that Android is "generic enough, it can be used with different screens and with wired and wireless devices." Once Android-based phones start hitting the market, Google may start putting out additional code that would allow developers to use Android on other consumer electronics with computing power that might lay idle for long stretches at a time, from TVs and set-top boxes to gaming consoles and media players and even sensor networks.

With that sort of flexibility, GridGain's distributed computing concept could one day be used by the military to provide quick computing power in battlefield conditions. Searching for a missing comrade, a soldier might take a series of photos across the battlefield. The combined computing power of all the soldiers' radios in the vicinity could then be used to analyze those shots against a database containing the missing soldier's photo. But such applications are still a long ways off, as Android is still a very early work in progress. "Nothing is ideal in version one," GridGain's Ivanov says.

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.