Recent Articles
Android OS Distribution released, Gingerbread leads at 55%, ICS makes entry
Jan 5, 2012 News Leave a comment
The Android development team at Google has released the Android OS distribution. The previous report released showed the increasing number of Android devices sporting the Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Though Android 2.2 Froyo has been dominating the Android marketplace but the latest report has a new leading OS as well as a new entry.
Gingerbread has gathered 55% of the Android Marketplace which is a 10% increase from October. Froyo follows this with 30% of the marketplace. Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) has made its entry into the chart with 0.6%.
The entry of Android 4.0 in the marketplace at such an early stage is interesting compared to all other Android OS’s gain. This is mainly cause of ICS supports both smartphone and Tablets. And more importantly, the source code of ICS has been released to Android developers, so ICS tablets are already hitting markets.
Distimo Report: Android Market hits 400,000 app milestone, 100k Active publishers
Jan 5, 2012 News Leave a comment
The Android Team have certainly more than new year to celebrate for. Mobile app analytics firm, Distimo released their report which states that there are now 400,000 active Android apps available in the Android Market.
The major contributors to this numbers are free apps which have grown steadily over the months. The report shows that the percentage of free applications has increased from April which was 60% to 68% by the end of 2011.
Its interesting to see that while Google’s Android Market needed 31 months to reach the 200k milestone, Apple needed just 22 months. To hit the next milestone, the Android Market needed just 4 more months while Apple needed 8 months to hit the 300k milestone.
In addition to this news, the Android team is that there are now almost more than 100k publishers in the Android Market. The report states “In the Android Market, each developer publishes 4.1 applications on average, while developers published nearly five apps on average a year ago
Source [Distimo]
Android and iOS App downloads breaks record this Holiday Season
Jan 3, 2012 News Leave a comment
Christmas is a time when smartphone activations increase drastically because many receive Android or iOS devices as gifts. Once the gifts are opened, users first activity on their smartphone would be downloading the apps they have long waited for.
On Christmas 2010, Flurry reported 2.8 million device activations. The first 20 days of December, 2011 saw an average of 1.5 million activations This Christmas Android and iOS device activations shattered records with 6.8 device activations which is a 353% increase over the baseline and 140% increase since 2010 Christmas.
When looking at app downloads, over a quarter of a billion apps were downloaded. The first 20 days of December saw 108 million app downloads. But this increased by 125% to 242 million app downloads across both Android and iOS platforms.
Android Still No.1, Reports comScore
Dec 30, 2011 News Leave a comment
Android still leads the pack of smartphone platforms in terms of US mobile subscribers during the three months ending in November 2011, as reported by Market research firm comScore. Samsung on the other hand is still on top in smartphone manufacturer market share. Apple also saw increasing in growth of 1.4% way behind Android which saw a growth of 3.1% during the same period.
The comScore survey report was based on 30,000 US mobile subscribers and on 3-month average period ending in November. Android leads in the top five smartphone platforms, now at 46.9 percent, a 3.1 point change. Apple’s iOS is now at 28.7 percent showing a 1.4 point change compared to previous report.
Android Training- New Android Tutorial Class From Google To Sharpen Development Skills
Dec 27, 2011 Android Development Resources Leave a comment
A new Android tutorial program has been launched by Google to help new Android developers develop quality applications.
Google has named this new venture- Android Training and has been designed for new as well as for old developers to enhance their skills and learn best practices for solving Android problems.
In Android Developers blog, Reto Meier, Android Developer Relations Tech Lead, said that program, which is currently in beta, will help developers tackle problems like designing effective navigation, optimizing battery life and managing audio playback. Google plans to add more classes to the program in the future.
“Each class explains the steps required to solve a problem, or implement a feature, with plenty of code snippets and sample code for you to use within your own apps,” Meier wrote on the blog.
For now, the Android Training has 11 different sections, including “developing for enterprise”, “optimizing battery life”, and “monetizing your app” while some of the topics are design related (designing for multiple screens, improving layout performance, designing effective navigation).
This is another step taken by Google to attract more developers towards Android, because a recent study has shown developers are more inclined to iOS, with almost half of them planning to make Apple apps in the following year.
Google Eyeing ‘Siri’ With The Acquisation Of ‘Alfred’?
Dec 14, 2011 android apps Leave a comment
Is Google trying to conquer the ‘Siri’ territory? Well…the latest acquisition of Clever Sense hints on that. Recently Clever Sense has released an application called “Alfred”- a personalized restaurant and bars recommendations app. Today, Clever Sense has posted the following on their website:
“Today, we are excited to join Google and start a new chapter in curating the world around us! Together with the Google team, we will accelerate our efforts toward this shared vision.”
The Android app, Alfred now provides recommendations on restaurants, hotels, bars and night life information about a particular locality where the person is using the app. This could be easily said that somewhere down the line, Google will broaden Alfred’s scope and potentially make ‘Alfred’ the alternative to Siri.
Using Alfred, a user has the ability to:
- Discover new places with recommendations.
- Refine searches for cuisine type, price range, distance and more.
- Details about a particular place and what is particularly good about that place.
- Find places based on your specifications, save them for future reference, and more.
Alfred has been described by Clever Sense as an app that can be used “to connect the online world with the offline world by delivering recommendations to the users in context, taking into account time, place, and intent”.
Alfred is now available for Free in the Android US Market only.