Currently, there are plenty of Android tablets. The problem is the lack of tablet apps. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
Despite the flood of tablet debuts this year, Google’s Android slates aren’t taking off. It’s not the hardware — in part, it’s the lack of tablet-optimized apps.
Google wants that to change.
Beginning Tuesday, Google is hosting a series of workshops tailored specifically for programmers who want to bring their apps to Android tablets. Dubbed Android Developer Labs, or ADLs, Google will host the one-day workshops in three different cities in the United States, as well as one in Bangalore, India.
“It’s specifically aimed at optimizing Android apps for tablets,” wrote Android developer Tim Bray on Tuesday in a blog post. “In particular, creating high-quality tablet apps with an emphasis on polish and user-experience.”
Google’s app workshop is one of many recent efforts to rally support for the mobile platform. Last Friday, Google rolled out a new version of its search engine optimized specifically for tablets, mainly focusing on user interface tweaks focused on adapting to the tablet form factor. Google has also attempted to make the Android Market more user friendly, rolling out major site changes — which include a revamped interface and the inclusion of featured app categories — over the past few months.
While aesthetic changes may help to spurn a customer-friendly app environment, there’s still hardly any tablet-specific apps in the market. At last count, only 292 tablet-optimized apps were available for Android Honeycomb users, according to mobile enthusiast site AndroidCentral. Apple’s App Store boasts over 100,000 iPad-specific apps.
There’s at least some explanation for this: Some developers say that when taking screen size into account, iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone are easier to develop apps for.
“In terms of layout, iOS is pixel perfect,” said Jake Mintz, co-founder of Bump technologies, at Tech Crunch’s mobile conference last Friday. Essentially, Mintz speaks to the fixed ratios of Apple products: While there’s only a handful of devices offered by Apple, there are over 400 different Android phones and tablets currently on the market. “On Android,” Mintz says, “you end up needing to design on multiple screens and multiple layouts.”
This may change, however, with the next software version release of Android codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich. Though details on how this might happen are scant, some at Google have given hints of what we should expect.
“We’re trying to make one-size-fits-all, and there are different products for different needs,” Director of Android user experience Matias Duarte told Wired.com. “Ice Cream Sandwich gives you a lot of tools to help build one app that works more seamlessly across a variety of screen sizes and different form factors.”
Regardless of what happens with its software in the future, for now Google’s proposed workshops aim for quality first, quantity second. While anyone can register for the tablet-centric workshops, space is limited at the events, with priority given to those developers whose Android applications have “the potential to be a top-tier tablet app.”Though it’s not clear what that entails, it’s apparent Google doesn’t want to populate its application store with shoddy merchandise for the sake of filling online shelf space.
Google’s list of dates and cities in which the workshops will be hosted can be found here.
