“We Need to Talk About Android”

016A Android Orphans

Fraser Speirs – Blog – We Need to Talk About Android. Good overview of some of the growing pains with Android if you’re a developer. Chart above, Android update history by MICHAEL DEGUSTA.

Right now, the Android platform looks stalled in the marketplace at Android 2.x. Android 2, coupled with vague promises of future upgrades seems to ‘good enough’ for most carriers and OEM manufacturers. Even Sony just launched their Experia S phone with Android 2.3 and a promise to upgrade to Android 4 in Q2 2012 (we’ve heard that one before).

And

From a purely economic perspective, I can no longer legitimize spending time on Android apps, and the new features of the market do nothing to change this.  While this news may be disappointing, I hope people can accept that we’ve done everything we can reasonably do to bring our apps to as many potential players as possible, despite the obstacles.

Another note about the challenges here. Some have suggested we do a free version for Android and fill it with ads, we’re not really in to that idea. It’s also hard for experts to figure all this out too.

A few people have asked if we’ll an Android version of our “Circuit Playground” app. The short answer is yes, in the works. We’re working on getting our iOS offering rock solid, fully featured and then we’ll be able to look at the best way to deploy an Android app. The good news, we have some time for adding features and for the Android world to settle a bit so it’s easy for us to maintain multiple apps. And while that’s all happening we’ll continue to sell and support the Arduino ADK, along with an upcoming Android-related product we’re excited about! (more on that soon).


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