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.

The one application that I was really excited to use was Layar.

Layar is a free application on your mobile phone which shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile phone.

Developers can create Augmented Reality layers that can be viewed in the browser.   There are a few Irish examples out there like

Dublin Bikes

Dublin Bus Stops

Daft.ie

I’m glad to see there are a few Irish developer doing a great job here.   This video will give you an idea of what layar can do.

Here is a presentation from Dirk Groten of Layar on how to develop Layers.  You can read more about the presentation on the layar blog.

I am really looking forward to developing applications for android and some layers for the layar browser.

If you are a java developer, download the eclipse plugin for android development and look at some of the sample applications out there.  You will be amazed how easy it is to move over to android development.  I can really see a lot of developers moving to android in the next few years.   With so many java developers out there at the moment, this could be the driving force that pushes android ahead of iPhone.