Remember the old Avis car-rental slogan? “We’re Number 2. We try harder.”

That slogan came to mind when a reader, an iPhone app developer, wrote to let me know how hard Google, maker of Android, the No. 2 app phone software, is trying to woo iPhone programmers to write their apps for Android phones instead.

“I’m the developer of the Texts From Last Night app for the iPhone. Anyway, I received an e-mail yesterday from someone at Google claiming to be in their Android Advocacy Group. He basically said that he wanted to open a line of communication with me in case I chose to port the app to Android, and he offered to ship me a free Nexus One to play around with.

“It shows that Google is actively recruiting developers to their platform, using the enticements of free hardware and open communication.

“Contrast with Apple’s approach: it took us about three months of resubmitting our app to Apple before they stopped rejecting it for inappropriate content. And even now (after we peaked at the No. 7 paid app), we still have no relationship with anyone there. Huge difference in approaches between the two companies.”