PocketGear has number of smart phone market

Jud Bowman, one of the region's best-known entrepreneurs, sees green with Google.

On Monday, his Durham company, PocketGear, announced a new online store for applications built to run on mobile devices powered by Google's Android operating system. Android is software that makes cell phones work, and it's getting attention worldwide because of Google's backing.

The new site is the first splash by PocketGear since Bowman bought the company this year from Motricity, the mobile technology and content business he helped start as a teenage wunderkind. After a merger with a West Coast rival, Motricity moved its headquarters to the Seattle area and dismantled its local staff.

Bowman saw potential with PocketGear. It functions like an online supermarket where developers can sell games and productivity tools that work on phones with different flavors of software -- Palm and Windows Mobile among them.

"This has gone so much better than I ever could have imagined," Bowman said. "We're having so much fun."

PowerGear employs 20 and has five job openings, he said. Next week the company plans to move from Motricity's ritzy space at Durham's American Tobacco Campus into smaller digs in the same complex. It will be in a rooftop office below the Lucky Strike smokestack that stands out against the Durham skyline.

"That was the power plant for the Duke tobacco empire," Bowman said. "I think that's pretty symbolic."

PocketGear aims to power the mobile application industry, and for that reason, AndroidGear is important to the company's overall strategy.

Consumers are buying more sophisticated mobile devices, called smart phones, that let people talk, surf the Web and send e-mail. And they want to maximize their usefulness. To help, developers are creating games, themes and productivity tools that run on products such as Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's Blackberry.

Thing is, developers need a way to reach consumers and consumers need to find applications. PocketGear functions as an intermediary. Specifically, AndroidGear.com is a site under the broader PocketGear umbrella that connects developers and users of Google-inspired phones. It started with 50 applications ranging in price from free to about $30.

It's not yet clear how big the market will be. T-Mobile USA last month became the first U.S. carrier to sell Google's G1 smart phone. Officials with the mobile operator have not released sales numbers but have said the G1 phone has exceeded expectations. Additional devices with Android are expected to be released early next year.

"Right now, it's an investment in the future and investment in the hype that surrounds this phone," Roger Entner, a senior vice president who follows the communications sector for Nielsen IAG, said of AndroidGear. "We'll see how many Android handsets will actually sell."

Clearly, though, other companies are making bets similar to Bowman's. A number of Web sites exist touting Android applications.