Android Application Development - The Next Gen Smartphones Are Upon Us

The use of Android based smartphones is flourishing, with thousands of Android apps being already developed by now. In a very short span of time, large number of mobile manufacturers is getting associated with Android. According to the recent study, the Android smartphone market is growing at an impressive rate of 32 per cent every month, with new handsets being released every other time. Industry experts believe this detonation owes much to the popularity of the Samsung S II, MotoBLUR, Motorola Droid, certain HTC models, and the open-source nature of the operating System. The biggest advantage of Android application development is that applications are built on an open source platform so the android developers do not encounter precincts that other smartphone platforms generally face. Android also presents an open market place to the third party Android application developers for immediate publishing and feedback. And most importantly Android teams can provide Android application development on any platform like Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Some of the best handpicked Android apps are listed below: Google Voice Advanced Task Killer Dropbox Evernote DroidAnalytics Documents To Go Amazon Kindle Places Directory Tripit Seesmic FCC Speedtest Astro File Manager Gist TED Mobile Pandora Got To Do Shazam Dial Zero Google Goggles Google Sky Map Tricorder FxCamera Photoshop Mobile Bump Barcode Scanner Some of the latest functionalities in Android application development that have recently become popular include Cloud based service integration that enables the companies to efficiently manage IT and also extend its reach using mobile apps, another is Location based services where companies can get a LBS app on Android where in the application can find out the location of the customer via GPS and give them the detailed information they are looking for, and many more. It is also said that android phones will become credit cards in near future and people will be able to purchase things with the help of the android phones. This will act as a starting step to e-Commerce companies to extend them on the mobile platform which will make shopping easy and fun for the customer. Additionally, if we talk about Android market which is the Android App store, Distimo Research Company says that it has shown a significant growth over the years when it comes to download of applications and it has also been predicted that the growth will be tremendous in coming years. Android application development is expected to reinvigorate sales with its additional features and low cost.

Android Application Development - Tools and Technologies

Android is busy conquering the mobile application development market and there are a huge number of companies who have moved on to mobile application development by landing up with Android app development projects. Since Android is an open source platform, the popularity is growing steadily and there are many mobile application developers who are trying to make the best use of the mobile platform. Since most of the startups in the field of mobile app development rely on free app development tools and technologies, it is easy for them to take up Android-based development projects for meeting customers' demands.

Mobile developers who create Android apps rely on Java language mainly though the Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A) is used consistently for writing applications in Python, Perl and other environments. With the recent developments in the platform with Android 2.3 and Android 4.0, the developers obtained an opportunity to start development of apps in Android as the latest versions support Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR technologies.

Android SDK is provided to developers for the app development process along with the environment for writing, testing and debugging mobile apps.

The Eclipse IDE is helpful for a quick and easy Android application development process. One can customize it using the Android Development Tools Plugin which thus helps in enhancing the quality and quantity of Android mobile applications.

Android Emulator ensures that the testing and debugging process using Android device-emulators is done smoothly which helps developers to create an environment which simulates the features of the OS as well as the mobile devices.

Android app developers utilize the Android framework APIs and take advantage of a plethora of C/C++ libraries. The libraries include System C library, SQlite, SGL graphics engine, 3D libraries and some others technologies.

Mobile app developers who work Android apps development can sell off their mobile solutions in the Android Market and even publicize it via a website. Android Marketplace is basically an application store which was launched by Google for Android-based apps distribution. The apps are created and distributed by developers worldwide and the store now boasts of more than 200,000 Android apps which prove that it is second to the iOS and is fast catching up in popularity.

The Android platform has extensively expanded its wings in the mobile app development market and has gained substantially too for tablet PCs too. With the advent of the offshore software development market, the mobile market has vouched for outsourcing of the process which has resulted in drastic returns in productivity and costs.