Okay, so I am a student at Northwestern University working on a project for an entrepreneurship class. I have a decent understanding of programming and computer science, but by no means am I technical expert. I have only dabbled in this field for a bit when I was younger, so please excuse my ignorance on the matter.
My group is working on developing plans for a new start-up in the mobile development industry. We are trying to address the problem of Android fragmentation, and that fact that developers have to spend way too much time and money testing their applications across a variety of devices. From our understanding, developers generally have to buy the phones that they would like to test their product on, and manually test it on that phone (or device). This costs a lot of money for small to mid-range app developers, and wastes a lot of time. Basically, my group is (theoretically) trying to develop a software product that would be delivered as a service (SaaS) for mobile app developers. Out product would alleviate the pains of developers by enabling them to test their products on a sophisticated emulator that can accurately emulate a wide-range of hardware devices and use scenarios. This emulator would theoretically be sufficiently integrated with a wide-range of hardware so that you don't need to actually purchase the phone to make sure it functions properly. It would also offer a huge array of customizable use scenarios so that developers can see how their application will function in almost any scenario (3g, 4g, edge, wi-fi, good reception, bad reception, switching networks, getting a call, turning it sideways etc...). Currently, there are some emulators out there, but none of them work that well from what I've heard. There are also a couple of companies that operate in the same arena, namely: http://www.deviceanywhere.com/ and http://www.perfectomobile.com/ So, I was looking for some insight from the developer community on how this product would have to be developed and implemented in order to work. Obviously, this is no small undertaking. We would be devoting considerable resources to developing this product - probably close to $300,000 - $400,000, with a 4 to 6 man development team. So here are some specific questions, I guess. 1) Is this product feasible to make? 2) What exactly are developers looking for in a product like this? 3) How would we best go about getting developers to try out product? 4) Would the emulation processes be able to be outsourced into the cloud, or would this require large amounts of in-house hardware? 5) What other considerations should we be addressing before hiring a team of developers to do this? 6) Would any of you be interested in getting more involved with our project, as we consider seeking funding from venture capital firms? I truly appreciate anyone willing to answer any of these questions. Thank you so much. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
