Rund um Android, einer der Hypes der Anfang des Jahres, ist es in den letzten Wochen ruhig geworden. Bei der ausgelobte Android Challengem, mit einem Gesamtpreisgeld von 10 Mio $, ging nun die erste Runde zu Ende. Google gab dazu bereits ein paar Zahlen und einige wage Informationen zu den eingereichten Applikationen bekannt:

[...]developers from over 70 countries submitted 1,788 entries to the Android Developer Challenge!

Developers from the United States submitted one-third of the total applications while the rest came from countries such as Germany, Japan, China, India, Canada, France, UK,

 

Many of the top submissions took advantage of the geo and social networking capabilities of Android. These apps allow friends to share their personal experiences and favorite content such as vacations, photos, shows, music, cooking recipes, restaurants, and much more as they relate to certain locales. I’ve also seen applications that connect people during emergency situations and others that allow users to share information on how they can reduce their carbon footprint. One developer even turned a real city block into a playing field where gamers can role-play and chase after villains.

Furthermore, some of these applications provide rich interactive experiences by combining web services and mash-ups to bring together data that’s on the web with data that’s on the mobile device. One application combined weather, pollen and allergy information in the context of a map that is relevant to a user’s location.