Android developers get invite to port apps to iOS

With all the focus on Apple's [AAPL] WWDC next week and the company's additional move to make its mobile platforms even more productive with today's release of iWork apps for iPhone and iPod touch, it must be tough being an Android developer waiting for some Android Market virtual footfall. Fear not....an open-source project is developing new tools for you to let you port your apps to Apple's iOS platform.

Getting in with the iIn crowd

Known as "In The Box", the project -- as originally reported by The Next Web -- might help bring the best of Android apps to Apple's platform.

That's a move which might even give developers the chance to earn a little money from something other than in-app ads.

The video up top shows you the 'Hello World' app ported to iOS. As the developers explain, "In The Box" is a porting of Dalvik VM and Gingerbread Android APIs on top of iOS. It enables Android application developers to execute their Android application on iOS."

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In other words, this could become the chance for all the innovation currently lighting-up the 'open source' (-ish) Android platform to go strut its stuff in Apple's managed ecosystem.

What I particularly enjoy about the above video demo incidentally is that the PC OS used is Mac OS -- but the computer it is running on is clearly marked as a Dell. This quietly amuses me.

Crossing the iSpectrum

This new project hasn't come from the Moon. It has history behind it. Here's what's known so far: Way back in September 2009, FlexyCore were building iSpectrum, a Java SDK for the iPhone. However when Apple decided to restrict non-Apple API's on its platform the team decided to focus on Android instead.

Flash forward to now and they've put together these new Android-->iOS porting tools using the Dalvik virtual machine. The in-development solution can take an Android app and execute and test it on different iOS devices. It can then build the app binary and submit it to Apple's App Store. It isn't feature perfect or road-tested, at least not yet.

More importantly, we still don't know if Apple App Store censors will approve solutions developed for Android and given a Platform nine-and-three-quarters (cf. Harry Potter) ticket to the iOS life. All the same this makes for a chance -- and it is only a chance right now -- for the best of Android to join the "i" life.

Speaking of implementing new paradigms in touch-based interfaces with a user-inspired focus on simple overlays to handle incredible complexity, (as Apple will be doing next week), here's an iPad game... for cats.

What are your thoughts? Is this a passport to let Android developers get a iLife? Let me know in comments below. I'd also very much like to invite you to follow me on Twitter so I can let you know when I post new reports here first on Computerworld.