In the previous article (Why Developing For Android Mobile Devices? Marketer, Developer Perspective.) we discuss why DEVELOP FOR ANDROID also why develop of general mobile platforms from the developer perspective, in this article we will continue explain why you must develop for android from user perspective and why android different from other platforms and finally will explained the major difference between j2me and IOS and compare them with an android platform.
First of all let us explore the feature that android provide for the end user.
For end users - android user perspective
- No license fee
- More than 30K application in the market with 61% are free apps
- Supported by dozens of hardware manufacturers
- Low price smart-phone devices
- Abilities to integrate with Google’s services
- Android Takes Lead in US Smartphone Market
- In January 2011, 31.2% of smartphone market, (7.1% in 2010), 30.4% Blackberry, and 24.7% iPhone
What Android Has That Other Platforms Don’t Have
Many of the features listed in the previous article (what is android? Developer applications guide), such as 3D graphics and native database support, are also available in other native mobile SDKs, as well as becoming available on mobile browsers.
The following non comprehensive list details some of the features available on Android that may not be available on all modern mobile development platforms:
- Google Maps applications
The Map View lets you display, manipulate, and annotate a Google Map within your Activities to build map-based applications.
- Background services and applications
You can create applications based on an event-driven model, working silently while other applications are being used or while your mobile sits ignored until it rings, flashes, or vibrates to get your attention.
Android provides the same opportunities for all applications and developers.
- Shared data and inter-process communication
Using Intents and Content Providers, Android lets your applications exchange messages, perform processing, and share data between other application.
- All applications are created equal
Android doesn’t differentiate between native applications and those developed by third parties. This gives consumers unprecedented power to change the look and feel of their devices by letting them completely replace every native application with a third-party alternative that has access to the same underlying data and hardware.
- Wi-Fi Direct and Android Beam
Using these innovative new inter-device communication APIs, you can include features such as instant media sharing and streaming.
- Home-screen Widgets, Live Wallpaper, and the quick search box
Using Widgets and Live Wallpaper, you can create windows into your application from the phone’s home screen.
The quick search box lets you integrate search results from your application directly into the phone’s search functionality.
Android vs. J2ME
- Multiple device configurations
- J2ME has 2 classes of micro devices
- Android offers only one
- Ease of understanding
- J2ME has multiple UI model (MIDlets, Xlets, AWT, Swing …)
- Android support for only one, so it would be more easier to understandthan J2ME
- Responsiveness
- Dalvik VM vs. JVM
- Dalvik VM vs. KVM
- Java compatibility
- Android runs .dex bytecode
- Runtime interpretation of Java bytecode is not possible
- Adoption
- Most of mobile phone support for J2ME
- But uniformity, cost, ease of development in Android are the reasons for java developer to program for it
- Java SE support
- Android support for J2SE more complete than J2ME CDC (except AWT & Swing)
Apple vs. Android
- Games 52.2% of app sales in 2010
- 350K apps in iStore, 130K in Android market - 294K in may .
- Android easiest to write for Tools plus getting published
- Fragmented hardware
