If you already use Maven, developing a Android application isn't going to be a stretch. There's a very active community of open source projects for maven-droid development, and the Android SDK artifacts are available on Central.
You've probably noticed increased advertising for Google's Android platform over the past few months. The mobile wars are heating up with the release of iPhone 4 and Android-based phones seem to be gaining market share at a rapid pace. Even if you don't already develop for a mobile platform, you, your company, the organization you are a part of has started to have discussions about developing applications for these smart phones.
If you are thinking about mobile development with Maven, Here are some pointers to some great resources to get you started:
- Android SDK artifacts are now available in Central. This means that you can create a project and get started without having to manually install artifacts.
- Manfred Moser has some free sample code and Maven projects
- There is an active and rapidly developing m2eclipse Android plugin from Hugo Josefson and Ricardo Gladwell which adds Android support to m2eclipse.
If you are looking at mobile development, you've got two big choices: Apple's iOS 4 or the Android platform. I've used both, I'm impressed with Apple's tools: they have great APIs, XCode is a really capable tool, but learning a whole new set of tools does seem to be a high barrier for most developers. Droid does Maven, and because of that, there is a much lower barrier to experimentation.
When a technology connects with a tool like Maven, it opens up new possibilities for developers.
