What is Android App Development?

An Android app is a software application running on the Android platform. Because the Android platform is built for mobile devices, a typical Android app is designed for a smartphone or a tablet PC running on the Android OS.

In the last 10 years, Android has made a name for itself, not only with its candy-themed platform updates, but also with its widespread, and unexpected, success. In its lifetime, the open-source mobile operating system has grown to include 1.4 billion active users and 80% of smartphones today run Android software. Over 1 billion Android phones were sold in 2014 alone.

Mobile developers in the programming community are the minority – just over 9% of total developers in the world say they’re focusing on mobile devices, according to Stack Overflow’s 2015 developer survey. Of these mobile developers, however, Android developers make up the larger group, with 44.6% self-identifying as Android developers, compared to 33.4% who say they are building for iOS. Even so, many companies struggle to find enough developers to complete their Android projects. This trend is likely to continue as the overall number of smartphone users – and Android users, specifically – continues to grow.

A QUICK HISTORY LESSON

Back in 2005, two years prior to the release of the iPhone, Google quietly purchased Android Inc., a cash-strapped startup developing an open-source mobile platform based on the Linux operating system. In 2007, Google released this software to the world.

The beauty of open source, Java, and the SDK.

As the first Android phones were announced, Google made Android open source, meaning developers could access, understand, and even modify the underlying phone software. Unlike Apple, Google chose to allow developers to freely develop and distribute apps to users without a complicated review process. Finally, Android applications would be built with Java, a well-supported and stable language with a wide base of existing developers. An Android Software Developer Kit (SDK) was assembled, giving app builders libraries of Java code they could include in their projects to make it easy to access device functionality. Java’s history as a mobile device application platform significantly pre-dated Android and the idea of developing Java apps for mobile phones made a lot of sense. After all, the beauty of Java is that is is well-suited to an environment where many different devices need to be supported, due to its ability to compile applications “just-in-time.”

Maker-friendly.

More than a million apps have been published to Google Play to date. Initially, Google Developers had to submit their applications to the Google Play store, and many apps are still primarily sold through this official Google app marketplace. However, because Android is open source, many other companies have since been successful in creating their own app stores – for example, Amazon has built a separate app store for users of their Kindle devices, which run a version of Android. This fragmentation of the app marketplace gives more control to developers and stands in contrast to the closed, highly-curated Apple ecosystem. Even today, the application review process for Google Play is primarily intended to weed out explicit or offensive content, and it doesn’t significantly affect the time it takes to publish an app.

Because Android software is open source, manufacturers are able to fork the software and add their own functionality. However, because Google invests so much into the Android ecosystem, most manufacturers have kept their branches of the software close to Google’s, allowing their users to access key new features that are rolled out by Google on a regular basis.

One downside of this fragmentation is that it often falls on manufacturers to individually coordinate updates for their devices, resulting in delays for older-model phones. However, this reliance of handset manufacturers on Google means that Google is held to its commitment to maintain an open and fair ecosystem, even as Android has gathered wild success.

Basics of Android

Deep Structural Diagnostics.

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