Mobile Software Development Made Easier Through Android

By Michael Martin
Expert Author
Article Date: 2009-07-07

Android continues to build momentum by making life easier for developers and possibly converting a rival mobile OS Symbian backer Nokia to contemplate switching to Android phones.

Google has provided an NDK (Native Development Kit) on top of the Android SDK to allow developers to code natively in such languages as C & C++ thus allowing faster & higher performing Android applications.

This could open up other doors such as a mobile Firefox browser which CNET confirmed Mozilla is looking into.

In my opinion Mozilla will be dragging their feet to assist on a Google product at this time due in large part to Google releasing Chrome which threatens Mozilla directly in the browser space and indirectly as it allows Google to ultimately turn off the spigot for the vast share of Mozilla's revenue via their search partnership.

There is also a means for developers to create iPhone & Android applications on a single platform so as to avoid recoding for either via Appcelerator.

In the end this is meant to further induce developers to Android which David Green detailed quite well the development difference between Android and the iPhone on his blog - Green's Opinion.

David had this as the summary: "Android's platform and developer tools are excellent. Leveraging Java and the Eclipse IDE are major winning factors for Android. Apple's developer tools are shockingly bad by comparison. The Objective-C language and platform APIs are cumbersome and poorly organized. Overall when developing for the iPhone I felt like I was back in 1993. These factors combined in my estimation make application development about three times more expensive when developing for iPhone. The only area where Apple's developer tools excelled was in profiling and heap analysis."

Android isn't just winning over developers but ultimately making competitors think twice about switching as the Guardian reported Nokia may put out an Android phone in the near future.

Nokia has since stated, "There is no truth to this story whatsoever. It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones."

Nokia bought out and is the principal backer of its mobile software Symbian so its nearly tantamount to Apple planning to put out an Android phone.

Just the fact that Nokia felt compelled to respond and defend its outclassed mobile platform shows there may be something there as it covers them to consider it privately or trying to hedge their bets.

The momentum is building as more and more follow the Android Pied Piper for a better mobile experience rather than the shriek of the Apple Sirens.

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About the Author:
Graduating from UMass Dartmouth with a Computer Engineering degree and a minor in German, Michael Martin quickly entered the IT Project Management field.

Adding SEO knowledge within managing projects led to working on such sites as IGN.com, Active.com, SC Johnson product sites, and the Google Android Mobile platform site GoogleAndBlog.com. Michael Martin has also collaborated in doing SEO guest posts on such sites as Michael Gray's Graywolf SEO Blog.