Microsoft has launched a new Bing for Mobile Android App, via the Verizon Android Marketplace, that does all the things you'd expect: mobile-friendly homepage, quick-access maps with listings of local businesses, a Favorites option, and instant answers for things like movies and flight status.

The company's baked a good amount of voice search into the app, allowing you to say things like "movies" in order to pull down info like theaters and showtimes. I haven't had a chance to test it out, since my current Android phone (the upcoming Samsung Epic 4G) doesn't run on Verizon's network, but I've no doubt that my colleague Clint Boulton and his trusty Droid Whatever are putting the app through its paces as we speak.

Obviously, the Bing for Mobile Android bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the version available for iPhone. And I can only assume that similar functionality will find its way onto Windows Phone 7, once those devices begin trickling onto the street.

Now that Yahoo's transferred its back-end search to Bing, raising the latter's share of the search-engine market to nearly a third (depending on the outside analysis firm), the competition between Microsoft and Google will only intensify--not that it isn't at DEFCON-2 already. Given how much the two companies will depend on mobile for their broader corporate strategy, trust their smartphone-search-app battle to follow the one for traditional search, with a tit-for-tat matching of features.

As the old capitalist cliché about competition goes, the ultimate victors will be consumers. In the meantime, though, it'll be interesting to see how Bing and Google build out their smartphone offerings.