There are three ways to look at smartphone application development. One is from the point of view of a developer, which entails figuring out what the client needs and what platform are suited for it. The other two views are to look at it from the point of view of a business and as a customer.
Looking on it as a business, there are multiple considerations. For starters, there’s the question of what device the business wants to develop an app for. The best thing to do is develop apps for all the major platforms that customers are likely to use.
That means developing applications for Android enabled phones, along with another one for iOS which can be used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod. If resources permit, also develop apps for the Blackberry OS, Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile or Phone 7. No doubt it won’t be easy to offer all these apps which would need to be built separately, but offer as many as possible in order to reach more customers.lication
Looking on it as a smart phone user, the main things that need to be kept in mind is that an app needs to be free (or cheap), easy to use and useful. The only way an app becomes a hit is by word of mouth, and it is important to make a good first impression. So at least as an introductory offer, make the app affordable and more useful than the company website.
The developer needs to take all of the above into consideration when getting started with smartphone application development for a client. Then comes the technical part, which is to translate the client’s needs into a functional app. Each of the aforementioned platforms has its own methods and tools that are used for developing applications.
For example, Android apps are written in Java and Eclipse is the IDE (environment). The OS is a multi-user Linux-based open source project, which treats each app as a distinct user and allows it run in its own virtual machine. All it needs to get started is to download both the Android SDK and Eclipse with an ADT plugin.
Developing iOS apps for Apple devices, on the other hand, is a bit more formal. The developer has to be registered as an iOS developer, and can then download and build the apps using the tools in the iOS SDK.
Information Credit: https://bharatandroidapplicationdevelopment.wordpress.com/