More and more companies are focusing their efforts on the mobile market and offering an ‘app’ for their product or brand.
However, many are falling into the trap of only focusing on developing iPhone apps. As Gartner has reported, Android is now outselling iPhone as the smartphone of choice.   In the future there is going to be a major effort from these companies with established apps to port them over to Android.

Android is an App market that companies can’t afford to ignore.

Gartner estimates Android phones accounted for 75 percent to 80 percent of Verizon Wireless’s smartphone trade in the third quarter of 2010. Manufacturers such as Samsung continued to launch high-end devices like the Galaxy S. But manufacturers also launched Android devices at lower prices to target different consumer segments. For example, ZTE launched a sub-£100 Android phone with Orange in the prepay U.K. market. For its part, Google is maintaining a fast pace of OS updates. Each version brings new features and polish to Android, and the level of innovation is a major differentiator.

So why is this good for Java Developers?

If you are a Java developer and thinking of making the transition to mobile app development, Android is a natural choice.    It allows you to continue to develop in Java and progress your career to the next level.

The API is very well documented and there are lot of great tutorials in the dev guide.     Google even have lots of sample apps and tutorials to get you started.   If all that wasn’t good enough, there is also an eclipse plugin so you can continue to develop in eclipse.

The presentation below should be you a quick overview of the architecture and how to get started.