Google Hiring Android Devs To Close the 'Apps Gap'

jfruhlinger writes "Google is reportedly hiring Android developers specifically to boost the number of apps available for the platform. Obviously there's money to be made, but the search giant is no doubt also driven by the gap between Android and iOS apps in both quantity and quality."

Re:Perhaps an Objective C - Java tool?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this will happen. Google would prefer it if devs shifted the focus from iOS to Android, the app you speak of would allow developers to continue focusing on iOS and port to Android as an afterthought. Android might just end up with slower iOS apps which don't really follow the conventions of android.

filter crap

[Anonymous Coward]

How about they make they audit the existing apps and get rid of the crap.

Cart Before Horse, Please!

[bradgoodman]

Android is the #1 shipping smartphone platform, a completely open system, with free, publicly available tools. You can do it under Windows or Linux (the later, being also free) - on cheap, commodity PCs you can buy from any vendor.

So maybe we should ask the question of exactly why it is lagging in the app department. Apple never ran out and hired a billion people to write apps - yet they have more.

Is it the language? (C-Like vs. Java)? The "sleekness" and appeal of the OS itself? The mere fact that it's been on the market longer?

I, for one, am an open-source fanatic. I work as a Linux/kernel development engineer, and think Apple is evil.

I also own an iPhone, and write iPhone apps in my spare time. Why? Personally for me, the phone and the OS are beautiful and elegant. I love the platform, and the outcome of my work - and it's easy too to make money with one appstore to have to sell it on (even if the Apple bastards take 30%).

I find Android slow, clunky, and Java-based SDK's (like Eclipse and the Blackberry dev environment) to be the same - where XCode is smoothe and elegant - even if I did have to go buy a Mac in order to develop for it!

So that's the reason why I develop for iPhone. My point though is the following: Answer the question for a majority of iPhone developers, and you'll discover the remedy to the problem - don't just think that hiring a hundred - or a thousand Android app developers will fix the gap!

I don't buy it!

[Qwavel]

With app stores having hundreds of thousands of apps, and with Google already having tons of loyal and enthusiastic developers, it seems unlikely that they would now decide to start hiring developers to write miscellaneous apps for their app store.

They know that the best way to get good apps into their store is to attract developers with a great platform, good sales figures, good dev tools, a good app store, etc. They are well aware of their weaknesses, including some aspects of their app store and platform fragmentation, and they are working on these issues.

These new app developers that they are hiring are probably going to work on some of the Google specific apps that needs (lots of) work. For example, their finance app still only supports U.S. exchanges (how do you think the rest of the world feels about that), and their Listen app has all sorts of problems and hasn't been updated in a long time. These Google apps have suffered as resources have been shifted to the core platform; now Google needs app developers to bring their own apps up to speed.

The market is at fault

[MindCrusher]

Maybe they would have more apps if the App Market place would work all over the word. Paid apps don't work in some European countries because there is no unified payment system like with Apple's App store. Although the Android user base might be larger than that of iOS Apple still has more paying customers. Google needs to see that the Market needs a serious boost in functionality. If revenue will increase developers will come.

Re:Cart Before Horse, Please!

[bradgoodman]

Yes, that's the point. The iOS platform is SO nice, that it beats out any of the "intellectual" Android arguments about being "Open" or "Free" - or even it having a larger marketshare. I'm not going to have to walk around with a clunky, crappy, inferior smartphone in my pocket just because of "principals".

Android PDAs have no Market access in U.S.

[tepples]

Google would prefer it if devs shifted the focus from iOS to Android

Then why does Google continue to require 3G support on devices sold in the United States before a device is allowed to use the Android Market application? For all the restrictions of Apple's App Store, at least iPod touch and iPad are allowed in, unlike Archos products which are limited to AppsLib instead of Android Market..

Better searching is more important

[Daetrin]

From what i understand, the Apple App Store does a pretty good job of promoting the good apps and making it easy to find what you're looking for. The Android App Store on the other hand is a total mess. The promotion system is so-so, the categories are rather broad, and the actual search system is very primitive. If you don't know the exact name of the app you're looking for to use as a search term it can be very hit or miss.

So perhaps what Google needs is better organization and searching for the App Store, rather than new and better apps. Perhaps they could hire some kind of company that specializes in search engines to improve their app store for them?