Dan Morrill, a Google Developer Advocate for Android, stated this week he was surprised by the rise of demand for skins and the theme “phenomenon” for Android.
Dan stated in the Android Discuss Google Group that Google engineers have noticed this trend in the desire of users to skin their Android phone and will be adding this as a theme category in The Android Market shortly.
He also states that sorting apps by rising stars and having a desktop web UI is also on the roadmap for The Android Market, but there is no timetable or further details on this.
These improvements among others I hope will fuel greater Android apps as well better interface & protections for the developers who will be greater incentivised to provide these applications.
A GAB reader, Derrick, sent me an email today asking me to post more stories as I haven’t even posted in over a week to which I replied that I don’t want to just post for the sake of posting & burp out the same blah information all the other Android sites shoot out at basically the same time – I honestly didn’t really find anything this week to be interesting enough to be worth the time of my readers.
Also my recent thoughts have mirrored those in an email sent to me recently, “I thought paid apps would release a flurry of premium apps, yet the opposite. So many subpar apps at a cost, even worse are those with great ideas, PR releases, and descriptions, yet when you launch them… they’re crap”
This has led to some FrAppDay posts not even being posted, but I think I have seen the light lately with some great apps like PDANet which allows Internet tethering from your Android phone to your laptop without root access even though in the Beta release it seems relatively slow and has some disconnect issues.
Antonio Wells of AndroidTapp has also been heartened by the applications of late and provided these recent Android application summations for FrAppDay here at GAB:
- Exchange by TouchDown allows you to connect to corporate email (Microsoft Exchange 2003/2007) on your G1 or Android powered phone. Full Email, Calendar, and Contacts all with “Push” support using ActiveSync. Technical support for the product is awesome and fast
- WordUp! brings the fun board game Boggle to Android. Play with 4×4 or 5×5 grid to create as many words as you can with adjacent letters before the time runs out
- AutoLock is a very useful utility for extending the timeout of the ?Screen Unlock? feature for the G1 or Android powered phone
- aHome offers the ability to customize the Home screen with skins and icons
- T-Mobile My Account allows you to check your minutes, your balance and pay your bill in one app
- Minutes Tracker helps you save on cellular minute overages by showing a notification of your “Remaining Minutes” after each call
4 comments… read them below or add one
I have been wondering why there has not been a big rush of developers for Android? Is Apple really still that dominant in the marketplace that developers are too busy working on iPhone apps? I mean that will really help Android and the new Palm Pre to compete! They need apps!
What are your thoughts on teh very low number of good apps coming out for Andriod while Apple continues to roll out exceptional apps? (I got jealous today learning that there is a new Skype program and Google Analytics program for the iPhone. You would think that Google would have developed killer programs for Google apps on Android by now.)
The Android OS is very young. Changes are made daily to not only the OS but in the apps as well. Let google find the developers that are willing to hand them over for free and well start seeing some better polished apps.
I think the problem is found in something you said… "Let google find the developers that are willing to hand them over for free…" There is a significant cost in building great, polished apps. The people willing to make a significant investment won't do so unless they can expect to see a return. Now that there are a bunch of new Android devices coming to the market, it's a real opportunity, but still requires a big investment up front. The kid in the dorm room might be willing to work for free, but a real developer with real employees who expect to get actually paid (pesky details) need a way to monetize that investment. In app ads aren't cutting it, so there has to be another way to make money.
Now that Google has trained everyone to expect apps to be free, it's hard to justify committing serious money to a development project that may never pay off.
I love Android, although I am learning more about what is good and not so good about the market.
I downloaded a number of wallpaper apps and a few came with disclaimers that basically said the developer wanted to hear from any owners of the rights to the paper in the downloaded collection. I guess it is easier to steal than it is to create.
I think it is very important that no matter what the app, not everything – like images copied from somewhere on the web – are ok to use because “Android is open source,” as one irate android developer told me.
Please folks, if you develop apps, be kind and honest. if you DL an app with a disclaimer that ostensibly protects the developer from his IP violations, TELL THE DEVELOPER and delete the app.
IP rights matter to some of us.
Cheers,
Bob