The milestone still leaves Android significantly behind the iPhone’s official 185,000 but has it catching up at a rapid date. Android Market has accelerated to a rate of almost 8,800 new apps per month and could reach the 100,000 mark sometime in September if its current rate stays the same. An increase is more likely as a greater number of Android 2.1 smartphones and wider market share could feed into development.

Resource:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/04/23/android.already.at.50k.app.milestone/

The decision reverses an earlier pledge in which it said it would help get Flash working on the gadgets.

Flash is very widely used on the web and many sites use it to power animations, media players and other multimedia elements.

Despite this, Apple’s products do not support Flash and it has made public statements criticising the technology.

Closed tools

In mid-April, Adobe released software called Creative Suite 5 that contained translation tools that automatically turn Flash code into programs that run on the iPhone.

Shortly before the release, Apple updated the terms and conditions of the license software developers must sign to create iPhone and iPad applications. The revisions prompted a lot of criticism from many iPhone developers.

The revised terms placed strict restrictions on what developers can use to create these applications and effectively banned them from using code translators such as Creative Suite 5.

At the time Adobe wrote that it still intended to deliver the translation tools. Now it has said it will halt development of future translation tools for Creative Suite.

“We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5,” wrote Mike Chambers, Adobe’s principal product manager for developer relations, on his blog. “However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.”

Mr Chambers also commented on Apple’s revision of its terms and conditions. He wrote: “…as developers for the iPhone have learned, if you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at any time.”

Apple responded in a statement to technology news site CNet in which it described Flash as “closed and proprietary”. Apple preferred to support more open standards which replicate everything Flash can do, added the statement.

Mr Chambers wrote that now Adobe will concentrate on Google’s Android smartphone software and ensure that its Flash technology works well with that.

“Fortunately,” he wrote, “the iPhone isn’t the only game in town.”

Resource:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8639240.stm

That’s hardly a surprise, even if the ongoing controversy about Apple’s beta iPhone OS 4.0 developer agreement suggests some discontent among those creating iPhone apps.

What is a surprise is that Android did not place second in the development platform race.

Of the 217 mobile application developers surveyed by Ovum:

81% said they were developing for iPhone or planning to do so.

Among the other top smartphone platforms, the figures were:

74% for RIM’s BlackBerry OS.

66% for Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS (formerly Windows Mobile).

64% for Android.

56% for Symbian.

However, expect Android to become more popular among developers.

Android, after all, is the newest of the top five platforms and various research firms like Gartner expect the number of Android devices shipped will surpass the number of iPhones shipped in the next two to three years.

But more significantly, Android’s openness should make development easier, once developers become acquainted with the system.

One particularly intriguing feature that Android developers have yet to fully exploit is called Intent.

Android’s developer documentation defines it thus: “An Intent provides a facility for performing late runtime binding between the code in different applications. Its most significant use is in the launching of activities, where it can be thought of as the glue between activities. It is basically a passive data structure holding an abstract description of an action to be performed.”

What that means is that applications can call functions that exist in different applications on the user’s Android device.

Steve Brown, CEO of Snaptic, likens the technology to Web mashups, in which different Web services can be easily combined.

Snaptic makes a note taking application, 3banana for Android and the iPhone, that syncs with the Web. Android developers, using Intent, have the option to include a call to Snaptic’s note taking code in 3banana so it can be used in their own application.

Android Intent means that developers don’t have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, in every program. If they want to implement bar code reading, for example, all they need to do is call another app that has exposed its bar reading functionality through Intent.

“It’s like a little eco-system of developers working together,” said Brown in a phone interview. “That’s what’s different. What it allows is for developers to be specialists and do something really well rather than each doing everything themselves.”

It’s hard to imagine a similar technology on the iPhone, given Apple’s tight code controls.

But it might come to pass nevertheless. “If people are doing better stuff faster because of the openness of Android, the iPhone is going to have to respond to that,” said Brown.

All that remains is for Android developers to prove that openness really is better.

Resource:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/04/advantage_andro.html