10+ Reasons Why Develop for Android Platform First

Thanks to Google for introducing Android applications – the world of mobile apps will never be the same. The core reason behind instant success of Android apps is the open source platform that completely eliminates the restrictions common to other platforms. This makes Android apps development a whole lot more fun for even newbie users who have interestingly joined this field. Believe it, some developers even as young as 14 years of age have successfully developed and sold Android apps. All you need to know are the development codes that help in modifying the apps as per requirements. Android phone users are given the discretion to manage OS for its effectiveness. This provides ample opportunity for Android users to have an OS in their phones that can accommodate any type of Android app according to their wish list while other phone, OS and mobile apps users are limited to the specifications of their phone-set and its features only.

The Android community is like close-knit family with huge support readily available online, just a click away. This makes Android app development a collaborative experience for many fresh developers interested in this field.

Why To Learn Android Apps Development? What Makes Android Apps Development Tick?

Since Android provides a more agile environment to perfect and test your app design, it is a safer bet to go for Android app development instead of iOS app development. We now present top 10 reasons why you should develop an Android app:

• Bigger & Better Market GainCompared to iOS platform, Android has a much bigger and growing market with an overall 48.5% share in the market.
• Larger Chances of SuccessAccording to industry experts, it is far likely for an Android app to break into the top 100 than for an iOS app. With the expansion in Google Play market, the odds of your app making it big are a lot more than in the iOS counterpart.
• DiscoverabilityYou have taken painstaking effort to develop an app that is now available in market. But with an inexhaustible amount of applications already available, what are the chances of your app getting the hits? In Apple App Store, apps ranking is considered an important factor for an app’s success. However, with Google Play there is a very flexible search capability to search for apps as per the user’s interest. This allows more chances of being discovered by the user market.
• Cost-effectively Marketing your AppGoogle Play provides its users over 12% more ad inventory than iOS which makes it relatively easier and cheaper to advertise your app. Imagine this power and how it can be used to devise a workable marketing strategy to make your app really sell.
• Standardized Marketing Attribution MechanismAndroid has a standard mechanism for marketing attribution that is well understood and under practice for more than 15 years. Android automatically provides referrer information that anonymously identifies the source of a download, so the solution for tracking performance is clear and unambiguous.
• Highly Reliable Ad AttributionUnlike iOS marketing attribution that requires several methods for database data matching, Android keeps it simple with a referrer-based mechanism.
• Quicker TurnaroundThere is no perfect application – meaning that there is always room for improvement. Lucky for you, Google Play provides a very helpful platform for beginners and their apps. Developers can react to the feedback against their app and have an app update available in a matter of hours. This helps in adaptability and ensures that app users remain hooked to your app.
• Perfect Learning PlatformWith faster development turnaround time and lower advertising costs, you can actually gain a lot from Android implementation. The Android platform is built upon the concepts of operability, allowing its users to learn a lot through experience.
• Huge Free Learning ResourcesAndroid community is vibrant and big. It has contributed thousands of resources for quickly learning the development on this platform. You can find your favorite media to learn android including eBooks, HTML, Videos and more absolutely free of cost.
• Google’s Ranking AlgorithmRanking system in Google’s ranking algorithm is not just about a huge number of downloads for your app. It ranks the app on basis of user retention. So, any start-up company can be sure to enter their app in Google play and then work on steadily building a user base.
• MonetizationUntil now, the research illustrates the payment mechanism as a huge factor behind why developers prefer iOS apps development to Android app development. However, with the integration of Google Wallet and Google Checkout, this gap between the two is also closing.
• Easy to Find HelpAndroid is a popular platform and thousands of experienced developers are already developing on it. Communities like stackoverflow are filled up with many experts who are willing to answer your questions immediately. Unlike other platforms, android also has a advantage of a lot of Java experts who can suggest you alternatives in case you are not able to figure out a way to do things in Android.
• The Java AdvantageSince Android uses Java as its programming language, it has almost all the advantages of Java. Specially in terms of a lot of free and open source java libraries that can be used to develop any kind of app you are thinking of. Though not all java libraries are compatible with Android, many of them can be used as is and some of them can be easily translated into Android echo system. I was recently developing a Adnroid app and required some of the utility functions for encoding, I sneaked into the Apache commons code and hand picked the useful classes for my app.
• Scope for More DevicesAndroid platform has been adapted by all the big mobile hardware vendors and this will change the type of devices in future too. The hardware vendors like Samsung, HTC, Motorola etc are spending less on software and more on hardware now, this will allow them to come up with more innovative devices that can be much better than today’s smart phones.

  We may see really well integrated home automation and connected devices in coming future. All this opens up a great scope for various useful applications market that is going to keep growing.

Mastering Android Apps Development – Learning The ABCs

Unlike their competition, Android developers are riding high on the opportunities surfacing in market because of the software development kits provided by Google. This makes the entire development process relatively easier in comparison to counterparts as the developers now have to work on an Android OS, test the app they created on the simulator and load it on an Android-based mobile phone or gadget. An added incentive for Android app developers who are sure to come up with more intuitive applications that are going to be a right fit for the targeted set of users in the market.

While thinking about the immense potential in the Android application development field, you need to master a set of technologies or rather develop know-how to be able to test the waters for yourself. These include:

• Number one is Java. The Android SDK is based on the assumption that all apps are written in Java. Although arguably there are some emerging third party solutions to develop in .net (see monodroid), after all, the underlying OS is Linux.
• The second is eclipse. Although there are a number of 3rd Party SDKs around, some betters than ADT, on Intellij, or on Netbeans; Google’s efforts are officially focused only on eclipse for now.

Other Related Stuff

Apart from these technologies, we now round up on the building blocks that also should be mastered to a certain degree in order to develop profound Android apps. These are:

• SQLiteSQLite particularly used as an embedded database for local/client storage in application software such as web browsers. Having many bindings in various programming languages, it is a widely deployed database engine in browsers, operating systems, and embedded systems, among others.
• Video and audio streaming codecs for OpenCoreA business model that offers a “core” or feature limited version of a software product as free and open-source software. On the other hand, this model offers “commercial” versions or add-ons as proprietary software or offers other services for the open source version in a similar manner.
• OpenGL drawingA cross-language, multi-platform API for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics.
• REST Based Web services, XML or JSONRepresentational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed systems such as the World Wide Web. REST has emerged as a predominant web API design model.
• Architecture for Native Code developmentA suite of Eclipse-based tools that are designed to aid Android application developers who use the NDK to write native code.

Future For Android Development

The trends in technology are constantly evolving – giving way to something more flexible and lighter in architecture. The day is not very far for the possibility of Google saying goodbye to Java and embracing Linux and native languages completely. Google already has released a Native development kit for C and C++ using standard JNI mechanism to complement Dalvik.

Similarly, Appcelerator Titanium is a tool to port code from a JavaScript / web dev type environment to native code on iPhone, iPad and Android. This enables quick development of small apps and is also helpful in transparent coding of intricate applications.