The battle between Android and Apple's iOS became a little more interesting today as Google introduced several developer focused upgrades for its mobile operating system.
Google drew its biggest cheers from the development community in the building with the announcement of the Android Studios developers suite.
An integrated development environment based on IntelliJ, Android Studios will make developing apps faster and easier through its live layout feature. Through the live layout, apps can be rendered in realtime even as edits are made on all types of mobile devices of all potential sizes.
The developers console will be overhauled to be sleeker, faster and easier to navigate according to Google's blog.
Better distribution and monetization of apps for developers is another thing Google plans on tackling with an upgraded developers console said Ellie Powers, Product Manager at Google. The console will offer optimization tips that analyzes an app on Play Store and will offer advice.
Powers used an example of the optimization informing developers that it notices more downloads from Russia and then advising developers to translate the app for Russian users. Developers who can't afford a direct translation can have Google display a list of professional translation vendors. Those vendors will deliver the localized strings back to the console directly for a fee.
Google Analytics will be available in the developer console for better understanding of ad efficiency along with revenue graphics displaying how much money has been earned in each country.
Beta Testing with staged rollouts was also announced. Alpha, beta and production versions of an app can be released with controlled access through Google Groups and Google+. Feedback during alpha and beta stages will go to the developers rather than the app's Google Play page.
Google said it is expecting 900 million Android device activations by the end of the year, double that of 2012. According to Hugo Barra, Vice President of Android Product Management, Google Play has around 48 billion app installs and 2.5 billion installs alone last month.