Reply to: Developing for Android

[d000hg]

Now Flash Builder where you can develop for android, iphone and blackberry:

Adobe - Flex: Mobile application development with Flex

From a very quick look the tutorials seem really good, more than one can say for most android stuff which is very much in the Geek domain. No idea of price as yet, that's probably the big downside!

Not sure how transparent it is to develop on the three. It seems to use a runtime system on device, Adobe air, so one would assume you can pretty much develop and then export to any phone. On the other hand, the first step in every tutorial seems to be to choose the platform so it obviously ain't quite that simple.

PS Flash Builder 4.5 Standard Edition £171.71, about £70 if you can upgrade from Flex.

You might also look at FlashDevelop, a free open-source IDE for AS3 development (flex, air, flash). It will be a bit more convoluted but if pennies are an issue it's worth a look. I'm using it for a Flex-based game right now and while Adobe's product is better, it does the job.

[xoggoth]

Thing about the Android store here

BBC News - Is 'open' killing the Android?

Yet sales of Android apps remain relatively poor.

IHS Screen Digest estimates that £1.1billion of revenue flowed through Apple's App store last year.

Android Market managed just £62m. The figure was lower than both Blackberry App World (£100m) and Nokia's Ovi store (£64m).

I don't understand this comment though, if you use the right keywords in your text the store search finds it.

"One of the most ridiculous things about the Android Marketplace is that the search feature is terrible.

"I mean, this is Google! You have to find out about the apps somewhere else and then go get them from the Android Marketplace," he said.

[Amar]

dont read books

ok, a book is good for quick reference but to get an overview of the technology, I find that the videos work best.

one can learn the core concepts of android development from here whilst working on an app which gets developed from scratch during the tutorials.

Android Bootcamp Screencast Series - Marakana

I am a .net developer and recently purchased Motorola Xoom so I want to do some app development. Hardest thing I find is coming up with an idea

[xoggoth]

Now Flash Builder where you can develop for android, iphone and blackberry:

Adobe - Flex: Mobile application development with Flex

From a very quick look the tutorials seem really good, more than one can say for most android stuff which is very much in the Geek domain. No idea of price as yet, that's probably the big downside!

Not sure how transparent it is to develop on the three. It seems to use a runtime system on device, Adobe air, so one would assume you can pretty much develop and then export to any phone. On the other hand, the first step in every tutorial seems to be to choose the platform so it obviously ain't quite that simple.

PS Flash Builder 4.5 Standard Edition £171.71, about £70 if you can upgrade from Flex.

[xoggoth]

There is also a simple builder device, app inventor:

About - App Inventor for Android

[Freamon]

Basically there are two ways to make money developing phone apps:

- Develop an app that suddenly becomes a must have and sells hundreds of thousands at £3 each.
- Do something more interesting with the data that the users generate.

[escapeUK]

When you look at the ridiculously low prices of most apps I would geuss very few do. Mine is 3 quid which is absurdly low for the work I put into it. But other nature apps are free or 59p (sodding nature charities!) or a whole £6 for one with 10 times as many species it's hard to justify more. Selling only in UK hardly helps.

Perhaps the money is to be made in having this skill, rather than selling something yourself? Also £3 doesnt sound much if you sell 10, if you sell 10,000 its a lot.

[Durbs]

Mine is 3 quid which is absurdly low for the work I put into it. But other nature apps are free

Know the feeling, I spent a fair while on my first iPhone app that went into the store as a free app and will realistically always stay that way and never make me any cash.

I'd release it free at first, at least for a few months while you polish it and add in new user requested features. That seems to be the way the Iphone market works and would guess Android is the same. £3 for an iPhone app would be deemed pretty expensive and is the price point for the big name EA games etc apps.

[xoggoth]

Has anyone made any money from Android app development?

When you look at the ridiculously low prices of most apps I would geuss very few do. Mine is 3 quid which is absurdly low for the work I put into it. But other nature apps are free or 59p (sodding nature charities!) or a whole £6 for one with 10 times as many species it's hard to justify more. Selling only in UK hardly helps.

[xoggoth]

will work for a large part of the market if one tests on a few dozen devices

That what bothers me. Mine has been tested on a whole 1 real device. Given the negligible profit an app like mine will make testing on a range of devices, even using those test services you can pay by the month for, are not practical.

On the other hand, as I said, you are probably ok if you stick to fairly basic methods and services and everyone has a chance to see if it works on their phone for 15 mins before their payment is final.

One thing bothers me, if you go to android market on your phone you will find you are already signed in to Google checkout and there appears to be no way to sign out. You can only use android market and some other google apps if you phone is associated with a google account. Does that mean that if somebody steals your phone they can go shopping on your credit card at any online store that uses google checkout?

[Freamon]

Anyone looked at this or even earning a crust at it?

I'm wondering which of Android 2.3 or Android 3 I should start working with.

One would naturally assume Android 3 is a superset of 2.3, and will supercede/obsolete the latter; but I keep seeing references to Android 3 being targetted more at tablets rather than mobile phones. So could it be they are separate "strands" which will both remain in use?

Android 3 is still closed source at the moment, so I suspect for that reason it would be a bit trickier? The open source nature of Android suggests to me it might be easier to develop for than iOS, but I have never actually tried either.

[amcdonald]

Has anyone made any money from Android app development?

Only if you count something that strictly isn't an App, but runs on Android phones

[TimberWolf]

Has anyone made any money from Android app development?

[amcdonald]

I've just started Android development using the Eclipse IDE and Android Toolkit. It's very intuitive. I recommend the following Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform Pragmatic Programmers: Amazon.co.uk: Ed Burnette: Books

I started off with that, it's a good starter book

[TimberWolf]

For what it's worth, the Wiki says the biggest market share is in Android 2.1 & 2.2:
"based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Android Market within a 14-day period ending on the data collection date noted below"

Usage share

Data collected during two weeks ending on April 1, 2011

Platform        API level               Distribution

Android         3.0 (Honeycomb) 	11 	0.2%
Android         2.3.3 (Gingerbread) 	10 	1.7%
Android         2.3 (Gingerbread) 	9 	0.8%
Android         2.2 (Froyo) 	        8 	63.9%
Android         2.1 (Eclair) 	        7 	27.2%
Android         1.6 (Donut) 	        4 	3.5%
Android         1.5 (Cupcake) 	        3 	2.7%

Android (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia