Google has recently announced it is to allow anybody to be able to make apps for smartphones which utilise the Android operating system.
The new software tool, named as App Inventor, will even allow people with limited development skills the chance to create their own applications.
Google Labs has displayed a video of the beta version on the website, showing users how simple it can be to build an app, while offering ideas for people to create these themselves.
It explains on the site:
“To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge.”
The App Inventor software writes all the coding, giving users the opportunity to choose what is included in their new design.
This software has been in the pipeline for over a year, with a number of educational institutions involved in its conception.
Leader of the Google project, Hal Abelson [CQ], who is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a blog post:
“Mobile applications are triggering a fundamental shift in the way people experience computing and use mobile phones.
“Today, smartphones let us carry computing with us, have become central to servicing our communication and information needs, and have made the Web part of all that we do.”
These new software tools will certainly give Apple food for thought, with regards to competition with Google’s Android handsets. On the iPhone all new applications have to be approved by Apple.