Amazon(AMZN) Web Services which has been beefing up its capabilities for mobile app developers, this week unveiled an online “device farm” that developers can use to check out how their mobile app code will run, at least on Android and Kindle devices. There is no mention of support for popular Apple(AAPL) iOS apps or for Windows devices.
Big tech companies are in an arms race to add features and functions catering to mobile developers as evidenced by Facebook’s acquisition of Parse two years ago; Google bought Appurify which offers app testing. Microsoft(MSFT) offers an array of mobile development goodies on its Azure cloud as well. For developers wanting to test iOS apps, there are options from Xamarin and Sauce Labs.
The promise of Amazon’s device farm is that a developer trying to write an application for Android and FireOS (the operating system used by Amazon Kindle devices) can code it, upload the code AWS, and then test it out in both environments. —actually Amazon evangelist Jeff Barr said it tests across 200 possible configurations.
Mobile apps are the focal point these days and not just for social interaction and play. More enterprise applications are now being developed with a “mobile first” mindset since many workers now view their smartphones and tablets as key tools at work, not just for play.
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