Android's risky business

But just the fact an app like this made it into the Android Market was frightening enough, Lookout said, because that indicates it could happen again. And with real, device-smashing code.

Android, which was founded by Google and is developed by an open-source community, represents both an enormous opportunity to drive the enterprise to the edge of the network, as well as the risk of kicking it over that edge. Unlike the iOS platform for iPhone and iPad, which Apple oversees and manages so closely that the company has been accused of heavy-handedness in which apps it allows into its ecosystem, just about anybody can write an Android app and push it out to the market.

The recent DroidDream incidents, among others, may prove to be a cautionary tale that might slow down an industry that has been racing toward Android as an antidote to Apple’s absolute market dominance in a strategic area.

Take, for example, Motorola. The company’s consumer division produces wildly popular Android- based phones such as the Droid X. It has received credit throughout the industry for providing the most stable and bullet-proof form of Android on a mainstream mobile device so far.

But Motorola Solutions, the company’s enterprise mobility unit formerly known as Symbol Technologies, is taking a slower approach with Android in providing technology used in business and government solutions.

“Our customers need certain functionality and capabilities in the underlying OS. We understand that a portion of our customer base desires to run commercially available prosumer and consumer applications available on Android, but the OS must be secure, manageable and reach an appropriate level of maturity,” said Brian Viscount, Motorola’s vice president of marketing for mobility.

“Enterprise customers just can’t deal with the current deluge of Android revisions and releases,” Viscount said. “So, we will eventually bring Android to market [in the enterprise], but we’ll be filling in a number of enterprise voids in the standard OS offering, including security and manageability, and we’ll be regulating releases to meet the requirements of our customer base.”

Some experts in the channel give kudos to Motorola’s own development of Android, even with acknowledgments that the raw, open Android source code needs more work.

“The standard Android operating system is very weak from a security perspective, whereas the Motorola [version of the Android] operating system is much more enterprise- ready from a security perspective,” said Mark Greer, COO of Milestone Systems, a solution provider.