Android has slowly been taking shape to be a viable competitor to the iPhone in all aspects. The release of the recent SDK and announcements of the upcoming HTC Dream shows the progress that has been made. The SDK includes an emulator that allows developers to get a head start in creating all sorts of applications and test them out well before any phone is released.

Until now there was no clear indication of how these applications developed with the Android SDK would be made available to the early adopters of the HTC Dream. We got that answer today in the form the Android Market. An App Store equivalent with virtually no restrictions on approval of applications. I imagine that the by the time the Android Market takes shape there might be some restrictions in place to prevent people from putting up malicious applications that cause harm to the devices. The initial implementation will only allow for free application with promises of paid application support in the subsequent updates.

I took the opportunity to download the SDK and play with the emulator and created some applications and had quite a bit of fun. The chosen language for Android is Java which makes the SDK available for Linux and Windows. The Apple SDK is only available for Mac’s and even if I were to get an iPhone I would still need a Mac to develop any applications and that’s just an investment I’m unwilling to make.

If the HTC Dream and Android truly take shape by the end of the year, I might actually consider heading in that direction as opposed to the iPhone when my current AT&T contract expires.

Cheers