Sams Teach Yourself Android Game Programming in 24 Hours

Introduction

Since Google acquired Android, Inc., to compete with Apple and Microsoft in the smartphone and tablet markets, competition has heated up in this lucrative market. These are two tough competitors, but Android quickly gained a strong market share in a short time, with Google celebrating its 500 millionth Android OS sale. (Although Android is a license-free OS, devices are still registered with Google—at no cost). Both Apple and Microsoft have invested billions to develop and market their proprietary platforms, whereas Google has taken the open standards approach of releasing the source code to Android (which is based on the Linux core). This has allowed smartphone and tablet manufacturers to customize the OS for their devices while ...