Android’s market fragmentation is often mentioned as a concern for mobile app developers, who worry that Android is fragmented across multiple handset makers, device form factors and OS builds. However, new data from Localytics suggests that developers shouldn’t be worried.

4G – the next generation of cellular data connection – is the future of mobile connectivity, and Android handset makers have been extremely aggressive in their adoption of the various new high-speed protocols. As Q3 2011 comes to an end, … Continue reading →

Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, announced this morning, would make Google the #2 manufacturer of handsets for its widely used Android platform. Motorola currently has 29% of the Android market in the US, according to our mobile app … Continue reading →

Apple and Google have traded jabs over who’s registering more users, but Android wins the upgrade race—at least when comparing two of the most popular phones, the Apple iPhone 3GS and the Motorola Droid. Two weeks into the upgrade cycle, almost twice as many Droid users had upgraded to Android 2.2 than iPhone 3GS users who upgraded to Apple iOS 4. The reason? iPhone upgrades require connecting your phone to your computer. Which raises another question, will Apple eventually offer over-the-air upgrades to iPhones and (especially) iPads?

Ever since Android devices have started to overtake the iPhone in terms of growth (and according to some reports, in terms of actual market share), I’ve been seeing a lot more companies take a serious look at both porting their existing apps to Android and developing new apps side-by-side for both platforms. I want to get straight to the point and demolish delusions you have that you can exactly port the UI for your current iPhone app screen for screen, rewrite in in Java, call it a day and expect rave reviews. Here’s why.

The Google phone is real. In the spirit of the holidays, Google said Saturday on its mobile blog that they’re “taking dogfooding to a whole new level” by first distributing the new phone to Googlers around the world. The phone, called the Nexus One, will be part of a “mobile lab” where Google employees will help test the latest technology.

The combination of Motorola, Android, Verizon and the DROID DOES campaign is off to a fantastic start! Although the iPhone continues to dominate, more Android handsets are on the way as mobile users everywhere continue the transition to smarter and more useful mobile phones.

Excitement over Verizon’s release of the Motorola Droid leaves mobile application developers wondering how quickly the Droid and Android 2.0 will be widely adopted. To explore this, Localytics looked at the mobile application usage of 20,000 Android handsets over the last week to determine the breakdown of users by phone and by Android OS. We have also used these data to make some predictions on device uptake over the next few months.

Localytics investigates the options for application development on Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Symbian, WebOS and Windows Mobile; and what tools are are necessary to build them.

Deciding which platform to develop on is not only a business decision but also a matter of what technology is right for the project. Each platform provides a different set of tools and development concerns for the application programmer. This is a brief discussion of the major technology differences between the platforms which are relevant to a developer.