To all those companies and developers focused exclusively on iPhone apps: Watch your back. The Android platform is catching up, and none too slowly.
As Android’s growth continues to explode since the release of the Droid, only the most foolish of app shops are not planning to expand beyond Apple’s walled garden. One developer, in fact, wrote that his app, which was showing modest, double-digit daily sales late last year, now reports that his app is making $13,000 a month.
When that kind of opportunity exists for a single app, why would developers put all their eggs in one basket, a.k.a. the “Jesus phone”?
A few weeks ago, we told you, “As of December 2009[...] 4 percent of all smartphone owners now use a phone running some version of the Android OS. That’s an increase of 200 percent since the previous survey released in September.
“Respondents were also asked about their plans to purchase a smartphone in the future. Among those who planned to purchase within the next 90 days, 21 percent said they would now choose Android.”
It’s this growth that helped fuel the success of Eddie Kim’s app, Car Locator.
In a blog post today, the developer revealed that his Android app “started as a little side-project while I was vacationing with my family, turned into a few extra bucks for lunch money every day[...] has continued its upward trend and is now beyond my wildest fantasy of what could have been possible. ”
Car Locator is a pretty simple application: Users save their location when they park their cars, and the app navigates them back to their cars later. The app was available in free and paid versions with varying feature sets. The paid version originally sold for $1.99, and the price was later increased to $3.99. Kim has done no marketing for the app, but it did win third place in Google’s Android Developer Challenge 2.
When Motorola’s Droid was released, Kim saw his first major spike in sales:
Archos has finally unveiled Archos 7’s specifications. This Android-powered internet tablet features a 7-inch LCD display and an 8GB of storage capacity. The gadget also supports MP4, WMV, AVI, FLAC and FLV. The Archos 7 will be launched in March 2010 for £150 or around $242.
The latest prototype of the Dell Mini 5 Tablet has been unveiled. The new gadget boasts a 5-inch touchscreen display with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and a front facing camera. Other important specs include WiFi, 3G and Bluetooth connectivity. The Dell Mini 5 runs the Android 1.6 operating system. Stay tuned for more updates.
The latest prototype of the Dell Mini 5 Tablet has been unveiled.
The Acer Liquid A1 is now available in the UK market. The company’s first Android smartphone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor with a 3.5-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and Triband (900/1900/2100) HSDPA, WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and a 5-megapixel camera.
