Same goes for iPhone applications. If you want to sell an application on the iPhone, you must do so through Apple's online store and you must get Apple's permission. Google is launching something called Android Market, a free-for-all site where anyone can create an application and post it online for others to download.

In techie circles this contrast is known as "the cathedral and the bazaar," based on an essay by a hacker named Eric Raymond in 1997. Raymond was writing about ways to create software, but the concept applies to the market as well. He argued that the old, hierarchical, highly controlled approach where development is controlled by a priesthood of experts (the cathedral) would be outpaced by the freewheeling open-source approach where anyone could contribute (the bazaar).

It's a great theory, but so far it hasn't exactly been proved correct. Open-source programs like the Linux operating system and the Mozilla Firefox Web browser have made a dent in the armor of Microsoft, the king of closed-source software. But so far it's just a dent. Windows still powers more than 90 percent of the world's PCs, and sales keep growing. And Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer, remains by far the most popular browser with more than 70 percent share.

But the mobile market may be a different story. With PCs, the market was already fully mature and Windows was already well entrenched as the leader before the open-source wave came roaring along. In the mobile space, open source will be hitting at a much earlier stage, when mobile computing is still evolving and there's no entrenched leader.

The smartphone market is highly fragmented. Competitors include Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry; Palm, maker of the Treo and Centro; Microsoft, with its Windows Mobile platform; Symbian, an operating system used by Nokia and others; and Apple with the iPhone.

Right now these companies are engaged in a replay of the PC wars from the late 1980s, when the market was small but booming and loads of PC makers were constantly leapfrogging one another. Smartphone unit shipments will rise 26 percent this year, according to researcher IDC. These new handheld computers ultimately may become the most popular way of accessing the Internet. Google, king of the Internet, isn't taking any chances on being left behind.

© 2008