By It’s no secret that the Android Market is growing in its app selection by leaps and bounds. The market gained 9000 apps in the month of March alone, and now hosts 38,000 total. [Insert soundboard joke here]. One of the developer’s of the Texts From Last Night app on iPhone recently got in touch with the New York Time’s Blog about Google’s forward approach with developers:
“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.”
It sounds like Google’s open communications policy definitely has some fans among the ranks of mobile app developer’s, and a free Nexus One probably can’t hurt the relationship between developer and content distributor (Hey, Google, can I get me one of those?). Apple does have a history of being a bit of an overbearing parent when it comes to apps. The App Store has a gargantuan selection, but it hasn’t come without plentiful disputes between Apple and content developers.
Google is making proactive moves in securing new, desirable content for the Android platform, and hopefully it will pay off. While there is a great selection of quality apps already available, there are quite a few big name apps that I know I (and many other Android users) can’t wait to see make a debut in the market.
[via NY Times Blog]
I signed up for an Android development course with O’Reilly and got a free phone too…a new Moto Droid showed up at my doorstep 3 weeks after the conclusion of the course. Great opportunity for a free course!
ITS OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, had to do it lol.
Google is awesome because they understand that people need to be reimbursed for there time..this is y I think google will beat apple in the long run…I LOVE MY DROID
Very nice! Go Google!
Google understand that the developers are what make its application great. Without its developers, Android would have never succeeded. Once you get the developers to make great apps for android, then you’ll win the consumers over. Smart move on Google’s Part.
I would love to see a skysports app, same as the iPhone
Posted from my Desire. ::::::——-)))))))
WELL.. the problem is, they need to get their OS and API’s right before they can bring in the big boys like smule and amidio.. Currently the kind of stuff you can do on the iphone is isn’t at all possible on android. (audio and touch latency, real 5 point multitouch.)
OH wait.. Google also needs to fix the whole problem of having such a small app space to work in as well.. iphone apps can be 5-600MB.. ‘roid apps have to fit into a tiny space of 128-512mb.. I like the open source model.. but, it’s a lot of hype.. cart before the horse. Being better than the iphone in theory is fantastic, I’d just like to move things into reality a lot sooner. The fastest, newest android phone can’t run the apps that a 3 year old iphone can because of a serious gap in what’s available for devs to work with.
(takes deep breath through nose..) ahh.. is that carrot that I smell? Must be another empty adobe flash 10.1 tease in the air.. (no pun intended, but I’ll take it.)
Google are great in terms of treating developers well. I have no doubt about that with my experience with them.
BUT the Android market does lack in a number of area’s, the main one is being discovered in the market, if the user isn’t looking for your specific app or looking at a QR code, then it can be hard for them to just stumble across your app.
This is from a user point of view, so developers must realise this.
I think an interesting experiment would be to publish identical apps on the iphone and android and see the download numbers after a couple of months.
Go Google :D
The Android Market rewards short release cycles, as the app will appear in the “just in” category. I guess they have some heuristics on your rating, amount of downloads and amount of current installations (information that is available to the dev) to decide your overall rating in your category, but unless you are in the top 20 or even top 50 in that category the only thing that really matters is the rating, and how often you release.
As for how Google cater for their developers I eagerly await my complementary Nexus One, for having made a popular application. I know this move has given them heaps of good will among developers (my friends and colleagues just to name a few), and apart from the process of actually getting the phone, this move definitely makes me a very happy dev!
As a developer considering projects for when my current contract is up, Android development is high on my list. However, being unable to access many apps on my Desire, including ones I bought on my old Hero, makes me think twice. I’m deeply disappointed in the copy protection limitation that is hitting us legitimate Android users, especially as pirates don’t have this issue. It’s not just Desire owners either, many new EU phones (and possibly elsewhere) can’t purchase or even see copy protected apps in the market because Google are taking months to authorise the firmware.
I’ve just put a few crapware apps on the android market (basically just to test whet people will actually pay for AND keep), but I am working on some pretty neat (and useful) apps, and all of this news excites me.
^^I’m all for the devs and all but you could keep your ‘crapware’ to yourself. We need quality apps with a reasonable demo period. Produce something of quality and more than likely people will buy it. Just look at nitrodesk and their touchdown app. It’s $19.99 and people are still buying it.
You can use newer statisctic. For example this one http://www.androlib.com/appstats.aspx
I signed up for Oreilly Android course too , and I’m gettin a nexus one XD
truthyness the problem is that android supports SD so hardware companies put very little onboard memory on their phones (SD memory is cheaper). But android doesn’t yet support apps from SD with copy protection so we don’t see the big games for it.
I want a Nexus One too! Please Google!
My brother downloaded the SDK for Android and wants to develop for the platform now. Not that he wouldn’t do that anyway, but just goes to show that anyone who wants to can contribute to the system. I’ve read stuff saying Android isn’t truly “open” but the whole idea of open source is the free exchange of ideas and making improvements on others ideas. Android rocks!