According to Symantec, a well know security software company, a man who has won about $1.5 million in poker tournaments has been arrested and charged with running an operation that uses Android malware, and a fake dating website to scam victims out of $3.9 million.

Kagawa was already under investigation while playing in that tournament. Symantec explains:

From our observations, the operation began around September 2012 and ended in April 2013 when authorities raided the company office. We confirmed around 150 domains were registered to host the malicious apps during this time span. According to media reports, the group was able to collect approximately 37 million e-mail addresses from around 810,000 Android devices. The company earned over 390 million yen (approximately 3.9 million US dollars) by running a fake online dating service called Sakura in the last five months of the spam operation. Spam used to lure victims to the dating site was sent to the addresses collected by the malware.

What makes this story so sensational is that Masaaki Kagawa was already a successful person. He was the president of an IT firm called Koei Planning and was a successful gambler. Since 2008, he's won $1.5 million in high stakes poker games and, according to Ars Technica, was actually under investigation while he was at his last tournament.

Android Key Lime Pie to be launched this fall, internally, this version of also called "K Release".  We still don't know if Key Lime Pie is Android 4.3, or Android 5.0. We'll probably find out more on this in the couple of weeks.

Manufacturers that build devices using the official version of Android-which comes with Google's Web services preinstalled-weren't previously allowed by Google to use the Android name to promote devices other than smartphones and tablets. Over time, Google has changed its "compatibility" restrictions to allow for more device types.

Samsung has said it's working on an Android-based watch with smartphone-like capabilities. Wearable computing is a hot area of development for startups and technology giants. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Apple was developing a watch-like device with smartphone features.

Earlier this week, Sony announced its new (own) Android-powered wristwatch, called Sony SmartWatch 2. This will be available starting September for $199.99.

According to a recent report regarding app market purchases, Android is set to become the most popular app platform in the world within the next few months.  Driven by new devices from Samsung, Google's app store, called Play, has surged ahead, despite a continued lack of top-end applications and consumers who still spend lower amounts. There are now 900million Android devices in the market compared to 600 million Apple products.

Although Apple recently celebrated 50 billion app downloads, users of Google's Android platform are currently downloading 500 million more apps per month.

Apple says that more than 850,000 titles are available at its App Store, while Google recently said that 48 billion apps in total had been downloaded from Play. Approximately 2billion iOS apps are downloaded each months, compared with 2.5billion from Play. 

Continuing at current rates, Google is expected to be in the lead by October.  Great news for Android lovers :)

Google Play Store revenue is up 90% compared to first quarter last year, according to App Annie. This report also shows that 90% of the applications are also available in the Apple App Store, which somehow shows the increase in the number of Android device users as well.

Various graphs were presented that shows Google's stellar 2013 performance-and the year's not even halfway yet. Japan tops the countries that posted the most growth in application revenue, while South Korea and the US come in second and third places. However, when it comes to app downloads; the US still leads the pack with South Korea falling in second place.

Furthermore, according to the research, games account for 80% of Google Play applications revenue and others such as communication, productivity, tools and paid social apps make up the rest of the 20%. However, Apple still posts higher revenues than Google when it comes to applications but it does not mean that Google is far behind. In fact, it's quickly catching up and Android developers are the happiest!

Source: thenextweb

The android market is constantly featuring new applications from developers worldwide. And because there is also an increase in demand for android tablets, these app developers are already starting to focus on creating better experience for tablet users. Because of the nature of this type of gadget, developers have begun taking advantage of the bigger screen and resolution to add more functionality to their apps.

And to display Google's support for the developers, they have given the developers the chance to feature their app optimizations on the Google Play Developer console. Developers can now upload screenshots of these apps, which can be viewed by consumers on their 7-inch or bigger tablets.

In addition, Google updated an app quality checklist that was created in October. This checklist includes tips and guidelines that help developers maintain a high app quality, aside from technical requirements to ensure full tablet app functionality. The update will help consumers choose good tablet applications in the market.

Source: android-developers