Motorola moved up a gear ahead of it expected Android onslaught by announcing a program to capture the hearts and minds of its future Android developers - MOTODEV. Expected later this year, the MotoDev Studio mobile IDE for Android is an Eclipse based development environment on which Motorola is expected to base development for all its Android handsets on.

Motorola described MOTODEV as an "advanced set of Android development resources."  MOTODEV includes the App Accelerator Program - a set of Wizards to fast track skeleton apps without having to start from scratch each time. Motorola announced they will be hosting an Android developer conference in October when it is assumed definite details of their handsets will be available, if not the handsets themselves.

Christy Wyatt, Motorola's vice president of software platforms and ecosystems, empahised the difference between MOTODEV and the current development offering from Google. "MotoDev Studio is a full IDE, not just an SDK. Android is a vehicle for innovation; it's not the innovation itself. MotoDev Studio will let developers optimize applications for various hardware capabilities, such as 3-D graphics using OpenGL, let developers optimize the user experience for different types of customers, and better manage development of apps for different devices and customers."

It seems every man and his dog wants to produce a dev kit for Android these days, just like they want an App store - some co-incidence? For instance, Verizon also announced an Eclipse based development system, but this is intended for apps which will be sold only through its own App store.

Source: Phonescoop