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Android application developers are the driving force behind the Verizon Droid and Google’s Nexus One, the latest entries into the world of smart-phones. The difference between these two smart-phones and the one everyone’s heard of – Apple iPhone – is that these smart phones are based on an operating system where as the iPhone is a singular device. Android is available to many different cell phone companies (or any type of company for that matter) who wants to program their own technology into a phone.

App developers are busy creating various applications for the Droid Marketplace which is similar, albeit smaller, than the Apple App Store. Apple’s App Store currently contains over 100,000 downloadable free and small fee-based apps where the Droid Marketplace features just over 20,000 free and fee-based downloadable apps.

An Android app developer could be a company of people who come up with new and interesting applications for these smart-phones to help other people in their everyday lives or an app developer could be an individual who stumbled upon an idea out of their own need for something like an app for finding the closest Laundromat that serves beer or a pet store that specializes in reptile food.

The unbalance of iPhone apps to Droid apps may soon be shifting, although it may take a while to catch up, Android apps enjoy some advantages of their iPhone competition, mainly that they can run in the background while a phone user accesses other information, be it on the web or stored info on the handset.

Due to it’s reliance on Google Checkout, app developers are approaching the platform with cautious optimism, many complain that the Android Marketplace is too cumbersome and one research study showed that only a small fraction of the of the 100 million-plus people with iTunes accounts used the checkout service.

Some solutions are afoot; T-Mobile has added billing support to the Android Marketplace which allows users who purchase something from the Droid Marketplace could charge it to their monthly bill instead going through the complicated Google Checkout.

An iPhone application development employee has nothing to worry about with the new Verizon Droid coming out later this fall which is said to rival the iPhone; however critics are not betting on anything dethroning the iPhone as the number one smart phone in the country.

The Verizon Droid is a Google Voice backed smart phone with an Android operating system, but so far industry observers are unmoved with all the buzz being displaying for its debut sometime this fall.

There have been a few early reviews, one from the influential gadget blog Boy Genius Report which called the Droid “the most impressive phone we’ve seen since the iPhone.  It’s positively amazing.” The other review came from TechCrunch’s Michael Arlington, who famously threw out the Apple iPhone because of AT&T’s spotty network of service, and remarked, “according to people who’ve handled the device, the Droid is the most sophisticated mobile device to hit the market to date from a hardware standpoint.”

The praise notwithstanding, analysts say it is doubtful that the Droid can ever live up to the iPhone’s “greatness” – even if the handset will live on what is widely alleged as the “best wireless network in the country.” The Blackberry Storm and most recently the Palm Pre by Sprint – both of which have held up as credible iPhone challengers, came and went without incident to Apple which just reported its most profitable quarter after selling the most iPhones on record.

An iPhone developer knows what consumers want and Apple has cornered the market on that.  The Droid is not going to beat the iPhone on features because iPhone buyers are not taking it to a list of features to the store because it’s not about the features, it’s about how they implement them.

For Verizon, there is a lot at stake.  The number one US wireless carrier needs something of a super-marquee phone to conquer Apples iPhone, which has put millions of consumers on a network of its exclusive carrier AT&T, many of which are regularly left to gripe about dropped calls.