Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) has seen more turmoil in the past 36 months than most any other maker of wireless telephones. The company, which saw a huge boon to its business in 2004 and 2005 with the RAZR handset, saw the competition trump it in just about every way since 2006, and it really has not had a standout product in that time. It hopes a new handset (of more soon to come) will alleviate that problem.

And, it's trusting Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android operating system to help it regain some semblance of wireless mojo. The new Motorola Cliq will run the latest and greatest version of the Android operating system, but will also contain Motorola's "motoblur" software that will attempt to combine social networking, e-mail, instant messaging, and more into every contact in the phone in one central place -- very similar to what Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) has done with the Pre device released in June.

Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) has been in deep trouble for a while now. For some untold reason, the company placed almost all its growth bets on its wireless division but has not produced a hit handset in years. Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and Samsung Electronics have been producing and selling all kinds of cutting-edge wireless handsets to carriers all over the world. What has Motorola been up to?

It's still producing handsets, but so many of the designs and marketing strategies have been commodities lately. Meanwhile, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has taken the mobile crown with the iPhone, and even Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) has risen from the dead with the new Palm Pre. Motorola was in such bad shape financially that it even suspended the spinoff of its mobile unit last year.

Motorola Corp. (NYSE: MOT) is apparently planning on a rather large piece of its wireless business being wrapped around Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android operating system. The wireless company already has 50 employees working on Android development and will be boosting that number to 350 before long. Since Motorola is one of the larger members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), the open-source software movement meant to support all things Android, this comes as no surprise.

Perhaps Motorola wants some revenue from software development for the mobile space instead of selling profit-challenged hardware? The company has had a rough time of things recently, but after spinning off its handset division soon, Motorola wireless hardware and software may be on the path to re-inventing themselves.

But can Google's vaunted wireless platform challenge the entrenched iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian space? Together, those three platforms control a huge swath of the smartphone market. Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), which now owns all of Symbian, has the lion's share of smartphone software sales globally. The newer iPhone 3G has launched in dozens of countries and continues to sell very well. Let's not count out Windows Mobile. Even Google may find it hard to take large pieces of market share away from these players. But at least Motorola is only placing a small bet here on Android's success. Three hundred fifty employees isn't too many, is it?