Android represents a clean break, a mobile framework based on the reality of modern mobile devices designed by developers, for developers.With a simple, powerful, and open SDK, no licensing fees, excellent documentation, and a thriving developer community, Android represents an opportunity to create software that changes how and why people use their mobile phones.
- The barrier to entry for new Android developers is minimal
- No certification is required to become an Android developer
- Google Play provides free, up-front purchase, and in-app billing options for distribution and monetization of your applications.
- There is no approval process for application distribution.
- Developers have total control over their brands.
From a commercial perspective, more than 850,000 new Android devices are activated daily, with many studies showing the largest proportion of new smartphone sales belonging to Android
Factors Driving Android’s Adoption
Developers have always been a critical element within the Android ecosystem, with Google a betting that the way to deliver better mobile software to consumers is to make it easier for developers to write it.As a development platform, Android is powerful and intuitive, enabling developers who have never programmed for mobile devices to create innovative applications quickly and easily. It’s easy to see how compelling Android applications have created demand for the devices necessary to run them, particularly when developers write applications for Android because they can’t write them for other platforms. As Android expands into more form-factors, with increasingly powerful hardware, advanced sensors, and new developer APIs, the opportunities for innovation will continue to grow. Open access to the nuts and bolts of the underlying system is what’s always driven software development and platform adoption. The Internet’s inherent openness has seen it become the platform for a multi billion-dollar industry within 10 years of its inception. Before that, it was open systems such as Linux and the powerful APIs provided as part of the Windows operating system that enabled the explosion in personal computers and the movement of computer programming from the arcane to the mainstream.This openness and power ensure that anyone with the inclination can bring a vision to life at minimal cost.
Some Features of Android Platform
Many of the features listed previously, such as 3D graphics and native database support, are also available in other native mobile SDKs, as well as becoming available on mobile browsers. The pace of innovation in mobile platforms, both Android and its competitors, makes an accurate comparison of the available features difficult. The following non comprehensive list details some of the features available on Android that may not be available on all modern mobile development platforms:
Background services and applications — Full support for background applications and services lets you create applications based on an event-driven model, working silently while other applications are being used or while your mobile sits ignored until it rings, fl ashes, or vibrates to get your attention. Maybe it’s a streaming music player, an application that tracks the stock market, alerting you to significant changes in your portfolio, or a service that changes your ringtone or volume depending on your current location, the time of day, and the identity of the caller. Android provides the same opportunities for all applications and developers.
Shared data and inter-process communication — Using Intents and Content Providers,Android lets your applications exchange messages, perform processing, and share data. You can also use these mechanisms to leverage the data and functionality provided by the native Android applications.
All applications are created equal — Android doesn’t differentiate between native applications and those developed by third parties. This gives consumers unprecedented power to change the look and feel of their devices by letting them completely replace every native application with a third-party alternative that has access to the same underlying data and hardware.
WiFi Direct and Android Beam — Using these innovative new inter-device communication APIs, you can include features such as instant media sharing and streaming. Android Beam is an NFC-based API that lets you provide support for proximity-based interaction, while WiFi Direct offers a wider range peer-to-peer for reliable, high-speed communication between devices.
Home-screen Widgets, Live Wallpaper, and the quick search box — Using Widgets and Live Wallpaper, you can create windows into your application from the phone’s home screen.The quick search box lets you integrate search results from your application directly into the phone’s search functionality.
The Changing Mobile Development Landscape
Existing mobile development platforms have created an aura of exclusivity around mobile development. In contrast, Android allows, even encourages, radical change. As consumer devices, Android handsets ship with a core set of the standard applications that consumers expect on a new phone, but the real power lies in users’ ability to completely customize their devices’ look, feel, and function — giving application developers an exciting opportunity. All Android applications are a native part of the phone, not just software that’s run in a sandbox on top of it. Rather than writing small-screen versions of software that can be run on low-power devices, you can now build mobile applications that change the way people use their phones.
The field of mobile development is currently enjoying a period of rapid innovation and incredible growth. This provides both challenges and opportunities for developers simply to keep up with the pace of change, let alone identify the opportunities these changes make possible. Android will continue to advance and improve to compete with existing and future mobile development platforms, but as an open-source developer framework, the strength of the SDK is very much in its favor. Its free and open approach to mobile application development, with total access to the phone’s resources, represents an opportunity for any mobile developer looking to seize the opportunities now available in mobile development.
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