Google Announces Winners of the 1st Android Developers Challenge

[Jeff]

Buzz about Google Android has been growing ever since they announced their Developers Challenge a year ago. Seen as possible the most viable competition for Apple's iPhone application platform, Android has yet to ship on a phone. But when it does, it has the advantage of supporting any number of vendors as opposed to the iPhone's one: Apple.

The first round reduced the entries to fifty finalists. The seven judges were sent laptops pre-configured with the Android simulator and all the applications. And the results are finally in.

Ten Android application developer teams won $250,000 and another ten won $100,000 for their entries.

There are some interesting apps in the mix, including two comparison shopping applications that scan bar codes and look up the best prices across the web; a cab-finder; a Loopt-like party finder; and an application that changes your availability depending on location ("busy" when at work, for example).

You can read Google's official announcement of the winners and learn more about the Android Developers Challenge on the Android blog, as well as browse a list of all the winners and finalists.

[Fanatic]

This is interesting, but one thing I don't like is that the UI seems to be very inconsistent (unlike the iPhone). I think that works in favor of Apple, in this case.