“The reshuffle underscores how quickly Google, which offers its software to phone makers for free, has raced to the top of the smartphone market ahead of Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) rapid ascension. Google and Apple have revolutionized the smartphone market, sending Nokia scrambling,” said a market analyst.

A report by the research company Canalys has revealed that in the fourth quarter, nearly 32.9 million Android-based phones have been sold, while only 31 million Symbian-equipped phones were sold, by phone manufacturers.

“AT&T doesn’t have any time to waste once it loses its exclusive right to sell the Apple iPhone. It needs to play its cards right to keep the advent of the Verizon iPhone from slowing its growth,” said an analyst.

As Verizon’s iPhone is said to have none of the glitches that are faced by existing AT&T customers, it is bound to attract AT&T’s customers, which could lead to a major damaging move for the No. 2 mobile carrier.

Explaining what the application does, a company spokesperson said, “Craigsnotifica delivers your search results with full pictures included, meaning it's doing more than just straight pulling of RSS feeds, and there are lots of other clever helpers throughout this app.”

It may be noted that it is a free downloadable application, which is available on all Android-based phones.

Founded by Rafael Sanches, the application has been in the market for a while and its sudden withdrawal had been very surprising and mysterious.