The Android Developer Challenge (ADC) was launched by Google in 2008, with the aim of providing awards for high-quality mobile applications built on the Android platform. In November 2009, the winners of Android Developers Challenge II were selected after two rounds of scoring by thousands of Android users as well as an official panel of judges. The overall winners of ADC II were SweetDreams, What the Doodle!? and WaveSecure.
Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications that run on Android-powered devices. Android Developer Challenge was a competition for the most innovative applications for Android. Google offered US$10 million in prizes, distributed between ADC I and ADC II.
All entries were judged by a panel of experts in the fields of mobile devices, cellular telecommunications, software development or technology innovation. Google selected the judges from the member organizations of the Open Handset Alliance, Google and mobile experts.
The Android Developer Challenge was first announced in January, with submissions being accepted from 2 January to 14 April 2008. With participants from over 70 countries and a total of 1,788 entries, the ADC was an immediate success, and the Android Developers' blog reported a submission rate of 170+ submissions per hour on 14 April. [1]
Developers from the United States accounted for one-third of the total applications while the rest came from countries such as Germany, Japan, China, India, Canada, France, UK, and many others. The entries represented a diverse range of application areas, including games, social-networking applications, utilities and productivity and developer tools.
A panel of over 100 judges received judging packets and laptops that were preloaded with all the submissions, for a consistent, fair environment to judge the submissions. After three weeks of rigorous analysis, the judges released a list of 50 first round winners, who were then eligible to participate in the final round. These 50 most promising entries, announced on 5 May 2008, each received a $25,000 award to fund further development. [2] [3] The finalists were then given a deadline of 30 June 2008 to submit their applications for the final round. The competition concluded with the announcement of ten teams that received $275,000 each, and ten teams that received $100,000 each. [4] The entire list of $275,000 Award Recipients, $100,000 Award Recipients, Finalists and Judges can be viewed here. [5]
ADC II was announced on 27 May 2009., [6] calling developers to submit their apps to one of ten specially-designated ADC II categories in August. The categories were:
Applicants were allowed to submit their applications to a single category only. The winners were selected after two rounds of scoring by thousands of Android users as well as an official panel of judges.
The ADC II contest was open only to applications that had not been made publicly available through the Android Market prior to August 1, 2009. Additionally, applications that were entered in the ADC I contest were ineligible for the ADC II contest, regardless whether they were winning apps. Similarly, updated versions of applications entered in the ADC 1 contest were ineligible for ADC II.
In September 2009, users of Android-powered handsets that could access the Android Market were able to obtain a special ADC II judging application from the Android Market. With this app, they could download, test, and rank applications submitted to the challenge. Users choosing to participate in the review process downloaded submitted apps randomly and rated them along a number of criteria, resulting in a final score for each app. The results from this first round generated the top 20 applications in each of the 10 categories (200 apps total), which went into the second round. The first round of the ADC II closed on 6 October 2009. [7] The first-round winners were announced on 5 November 2009.
Voting for the second round opened on the same day and ended on November 25. Android users were able to download the final top 20 applications in each category and evaluate them in the same manner as during the first round using the ADC 2 judging app. At the end of the voting period, applications in each category were ranked, with the community vote constituting 40% of the final judging score. Along with the public ranking, a team of Google-selected judges evaluated the applications. Their scores constituted 60% of the final score.
Google announced the top winners of ADC II on November 30, [8] [9] with SweetDreams, What the Doodle!? and WaveSecure being nominated the overall winners of the challenge. Furthermore, 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes were awarded in each of the 10 categories. [10]
Android 13 is the thirteenth major release of the Android mobile operating system, developed by Google, released for the public on August 15, 2022.
Adobe AIR is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile applications, programmed using Adobe Animate, ActionScript, and optionally Apache Flex. It was originally released in 2008. The runtime supports installable applications on Windows, macOS, and mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablet OS.
Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, though its most widely used version is primarily developed by Google. It was unveiled in November 2007, with the first commercial Android device, the HTC Dream, being launched in September 2008.
A mobile development framework is a software framework that is designed to support mobile app development. It is a software library that provides a fundamental structure to support the development of applications for a specific environment.
Wikitude is a mobile augmented reality (AR) technology provider based in Salzburg, Austria. Founded in 2008, Wikitude initially focused on providing location-based augmented reality experiences through the Wikitude World Browser App. In 2012, the company restructured it's proposition by launching the Wikitude SDK, a development framework utilizing image recognition and tracking, and geolocation technologies.
Plinkart is a mobile phone application designed to identify works of art, created by Mark Cummins and James Philbin. Cummins and Philbin were one of three winners of the Education/Reference category of the Google ADC2 where the pair won $100,000. PlinkArt was acquired by Google in April 2010.
Appsbar is a tool to build and publish apps for use on smartphones and tablet devices.
Android software development is the process by which applications are created for devices running the Android operating system. Google states that "Android apps can be written using Kotlin, Java, and C++ languages" using the Android software development kit (SDK), while using other languages is also possible. All non-Java virtual machine (JVM) languages, such as Go, JavaScript, C, C++ or assembly, need the help of JVM language code, that may be supplied by tools, likely with restricted API support. Some programming languages and tools allow cross-platform app support. Third party tools, development environments, and language support have also continued to evolve and expand since the initial SDK was released in 2008. The official Android app distribution mechanism to end users is Google Play; it also allows staged gradual app release, as well as distribution of pre-release app versions to testers.
An app store is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the computer itself. Complex software designed for use on a personal computer, for example, may have a related app designed for use on a mobile device. Today apps are normally designed to run on a specific operating system—such as the contemporary iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux or Android—but in the past mobile carriers had their own portals for apps and related media content.
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on desktop computers, and web applications which run in mobile web browsers rather than directly on the mobile device.
Android Developer Lab is a series of mobile software development-focused events around the world held annually by Google. They include bootcamps and technical sessions focused on Android and give participants an excellent chance to learn about the state of the Android platform, get hands-on with the latest version of the SDK, test applications on the latest sample Android devices, get questions answered by Google engineers from the Android team as well as meet other like-minded members of the local Android developer community.
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating system and its derivatives, as well as ChromeOS, allowing users to browse and download applications developed with the Android software development kit (SDK) and published through Google. Google Play has also served as a digital media store, offering games, music, books, movies, and television programs. Content that has been purchased on Google Play Movies & TV and Google Play Books can be accessed on a web browser and through the Android and iOS apps.
ShopSavvy is a mobile application for shopping that scans products and finds online and local stores providing those products. Additionally, ShopSavvy compares the prices, displays user reviews, and searches for deals and discounts on scanned items. The app was developed by Rylan Barnes, Jason Hudgins and Alexander Muse, who won the “Google’s Android Developer Challenge" and subsequently founded ShopSavvy, Inc.
Microsoft mobile services are a set of proprietary mobile services created specifically for mobile devices, they are typically offered through mobile applications and mobile browser for Windows Phone, | platforms, BREW, and Java. Microsoft's mobile services are typically connected with a Microsoft account and often come preinstalled on Microsoft's own mobile operating systems while they are offered via various means for other platforms. Microsoft started to develop for mobile computing platforms with the launch of Windows CE in 1996 and later added Microsoft's Pocket Office suite to their Handheld PC line of PDAs in April 2000. From December 2014 to June 2015, Microsoft made a number of corporate acquisitions, buying several of the top applications listed in Google Play and the App Store including Acompli, Sunrise Calendar, Datazen, Wunderlist, Echo Notification Lockscreen, and MileIQ.
Opera Mobile Store was a platform-independent browser-based app store for mobile-phone owners and a digital application distribution platform used by more than 40,000 developers around the world, owned and maintained by Opera. Launched and powered by a third-party provider in March, 2011 the Opera Mobile Store was relaunched on a new platform, after acquisition of Handster, a mobile app store platform company, in January 2012. The service allows users to browse and download applications for over 7,500 different devices on Android, Java, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, iOS, and Windows Mobile.
Google Play Services is a proprietary software package produced by Google for installation on Android devices. It consists of background services and libraries for use by mobile apps running on the device When it was introduced in 2012, it provided access to the Google+ APIs and OAuth 2.0. It expanded to cover a variety of Google services, allowing applications to communicate with the services through common means.
Afrinolly is a mobile application (App) which enables African entertainment enthusiasts to watch African movies, movie trailers, short films and music videos that have been made public by content owners or their legal representative most especially from the Nollywood film industry. Afrinolly is available for free on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Java-enabled phones.
Android Pie, also known as Android 9 is the ninth major release and the 16th version of the Android mobile operating system. It was first released as a developer preview on March 7, 2018, and was released publicly on August 6, 2018.
Umar Javeed, Sukarma Thapar, Aaqib Javeed vs. Google LLC and Ors. is a 2019 court case in which Google and Google India Private Limited were accused of abuse of dominance in the Android operating system in India. The Competition Commission of India found that Google abused its dominant position by requiring device manufacturers wishing to pre-install apps to adhere to a compatibility standard on Android.
| Software development |
| ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Releases | |||||||||||||||
| Derivatives | |||||||||||||||
| Phones, tablets |
| ||||||||||||||
| Custom distributions | |||||||||||||||
| Booting and recovery | |||||||||||||||
| APIs | |||||||||||||||
| Alternative UIs | |||||||||||||||
| Rooting | |||||||||||||||
| Lists | |||||||||||||||
| Related topics | |||||||||||||||
