When Google announced the creation of the Android platform, the company also issued a challenge to developers to create innovative applications for the product. Hundreds of developers rose to the challenge and entered the Android Developer Challenge competition. Fifty of those developers passed the first round of judging, won $25,000 each and went on to compete in the additional judging rounds. The competition is now complete with ten winners earning over a quarter of a million dollars each for their creative applications and ten more walking away with $100,000 for being runners-up in this intense competition. The new Android phones are going to be on the market soon, starting with the HTC Dream, and these are the applications that people are likely to make use of first.

  

Android Challenge Winners Look a Lot Alike

What was really interesting to see when the winners were announced was that the majority of the winning developers created applications that were similar to each other in one manner or another. A large percentage of the winners created applications that made use of GPS phone features in terms of offering location-based services, something that is not only of clear interest to mobile phone users today but also something which is obviously important to Google because of the popularity of their Google Maps feature. Many of the winning applications also incorporated the mobile social networking features that are of growing importance to cell phone users today. Those applications that managed to offer something slightly more innovative than the others in terms of using both the location-based services and the social networking services of a cell phone in a unique manner were the ones that ended up getting the big bucks in the end.

Top Ten Winners of Android Developer Challenge

Ten of the applications that were entered into the challenge were awarded $275,000 each. Those ten applications were:

1. Life360. This is a location-based social networking system that allows you to easily stay in touch with all of the people who are in your neighborhood or community. The example given is if your dog runs off, you can post a message to your phone through this application and your neighbors will see it and know to look for your dog. This is a clear example of a winning application that uses both location-based and social networking features.
2. Cab4Me. This is a really simple application that is capable of being highly functional because of the sheer number of people that may seek to take advantage of it. Using the Google Maps / GPS features of the mobile phone, it allows the cell phone user to easily call a cab from any location without needing to know precisely where they are located or what the phone number is for the local cab company.
3. Softrace. Imagine that you want to challenge someone else to a race to get yourself in better shape (or just because you like the competition). None of your workout buddies is around. Simply hop online and invite people who are also using the application to participate in a real-time race with you.

4. Ecorio. This is a green application that lets the user track his or her carbon travel footprint via the phone and then offers suggestions on how to appropriately offset that carbon footprint. This is one of the more unique, forward-thinking application winners.
5. Locale. This is an application that automatically changes the settings on your phone when you change physical locations. So, you want your phone turned off when you enter work? Just set it to do so and the geolocation services on the phone will do the rest.
6. TuneWiki. This is a highly advanced music-based application that is also a social networking and location-based application. Music maps, syncing with others and translation of music identified as being from a certain part of the world are a few of the features of this application.
7. Wertago. This is an online social networking service for people who love the nightlife and who want to trade information about the hottest places to go. It uses location-based services so that you can find the nightlife nearest to you.
8. PicSay. This is one of the photo sharing applications that made it through to the final round. It’s a fun application that lets you tag photos with sayings and then publish to blogs and websites which gives it the social networking aspect used in other winning applications.

9. Compare Everywhere. This is one of those barcode-scanning applications that lets you input a product’s information while you are shopping to compare prices of the same product at other nearby locations.
10. GoCart. This is another barcode-scanning application that does more or less the same thing that Compare Everywhere does, letting you compare the product’s price in-store with the price online and in nearby stores. It also provides you with reviews of the product on your phone.

The Android Market

One of the more exciting recent announcements that came out about the Android is the creation of the Android Market. It is considered comparable to the iPhone store by Apple. Basically this is a place where applications for the Android are made available for download by owners of the phone. The major difference is that the Android Market will not require Google’s approval to get applications placed there which means that there will be a range of quality in what may be offered and available at this store. It will initially offer just freeware applications and will have a rating system similar to that on YouTube so that users can let each other know how each application rates. This is considered a highly “open” system which fans of open source and open distribution principles will like but which is controversial among mainstream phone buyers.

What Android Market Means for Android Developers

People who are developing applications for sale through the Android Market should be paying attention to what the winning applications all had in common. Then they should find a way to go that extra mile to make their applications stand out. A winning application for the Android seems to be one that includes the GPS and social networking functions that are so popular with phones today. However, to stand out amidst the sea of other applications that use these services, an application must either find a niche (such as the cabs niche used by Cab4Me) or find an entirely new way to utilize these services together.