The long-awaited flood of Google Android devices is about to hit the market, which should help bring more cool applications to new Android phones.

Motorola will be the next big manufacturer to announce its Android phone. The company plans to formally unveil it at an event on Thursday in San Francisco. Motorola has already been reaching out to developers to get them on board to create new applications that it hopes will drive demand for the new phones.

Mobile applications for smartphones are hot. The fact that Apple's App Store has had more than 1 billion downloads after only being around for a year means that smartphone users are hungry for applications that make their phones more useful and fun. But developers, whether they are large or small, have limited resources and time, and they must choose which platforms to develop applications for first.

So far, it's clear that the iPhone is the first platform developers target. As a result, Apple now has the largest mobile App Store on the market with over 75,000 applications. What this means for consumers is that it's more likely that the newest and hottest applications are available on the iPhone before other devices.

And the reason developers choose to develop for the iPhone is simple. It has the largest base of interactive users. It also has an easy and efficient distribution channel using the iTunes store. And it's easy to develop for given that there is one screen size and a single version of the operating system.

"Developing for the iPhone is a no-brainer," said Noam Bardin, CEO of a mobile app company called Waze, which has developed navigation applications for the iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile platforms. "You get more bang for each line of code you write for the iPhone. But then the question becomes, which platform do you develop for next?"

Right now, it seems like the big developers are creating applications for Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices. And then they move to developing for Google Android.

"What's happening is Android is the third platform for people to think about," said Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, a free, visual voicemail service that is available for the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. "The way we have done it is as YouMail has gotten a larger and larger audience, we've started to see 4 percent or 5 percent of our audience on Android. And we've built an Android app to satisfy those folks since it's relatively easy to do."

Earlier this week, Yahoo announced a Flickr application for the iPhone and two other Yahoo applications for iPhones and a handful of BlackBerry devices. The company said it plans to release versions of these applications for other phones, such as Android phones, later.

"We will make these applications available on Android devices and the Palm Pre later," Sandeep Gupta, senior director of ...

Google Mobile App for BlackBerry now allows users to search using their voice, as well as with Google’s My Location. Google has been making substantial inroads with its mobile applications, even as a number of mobile device makers gear up to produce Android-based smartphones. Google Mobile App for Blackberry now allows users to search for a location either by using their voice, or by utilizing the search giant’s My Location application. "If you're like us and hate typing on that tiny keyboard, you'll be glad to hear that Google Mobile App on your Blackberry will let you search with your voice and with My Location," Luca Zanolin, Google Mobile App engineer, wrote in a corporate blog posting. Say you’re looking for the nearest bookstore. By inputting "bookstore" into the Google Mobile App with My Location enabled, you generate a list of bookstores nearest your location. Users also have search-by-voice functionality for their BlackBerry, a feature already available to users of the iPhone and the Android platform. Say the word "bookstore" and Google will generate local results, and a corresponding link to Google Maps. "Searching by voice can be used in combination with the My Location feature, and it works well with standard Google searches, such as currency conversion and weather," according to Zanolin. Google Mobile App will run on all version of the BlackBerry running on O/S 4.1+. The search-by-voice feature is supported on O/S 4.2 and above, with support for the BlackBerry Storm coming soon. Google has been seeking to expand its mobile device-based services lately, as well as refining its existing ones such as Google Maps for Mobile. On March 20, the company announced that Google Voice, which provides services such as automated voice mail transcription in addition to grouping a users’ phones to a single number, would include an updated Phone Spam feature. More mobile-device makers have been committing to Google’s Android mobile OS platform. Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC, which drew buzz at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for its devices, announced on March 17 that it could produce three more Android-based smartphones in 2009.