Motorola makes push for business-friendly Android apps

Motorola has made a fresh push for the attention of enterprise developers, giving them tools to write Android apps that take advantage of the company's business-friendly devices.

The Motodev for Enterprise resource centre was launched on Monday, at the start of Mobile World Congress 2012. A spin-off of the wider Motodev centre, the new branch is "specifically geared toward enterprise application development and deployment", the handset maker said in a statement.

"Motorola has had a longstanding commitment to meeting the needs of our enterprise customers by enhancing the Android platform's security and productivity capabilities — a commitment underscored by the fact that we have already shipped millions of Business Ready devices around the world," Motorola enterprise chief Christy Wyatt said.

The tools in the Motodev for Enterprise centre include 'getting started' resources, blogs, training videos and webinars, application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs).

Motorola Mobility, which is in the process of becoming a Google subsidiary, has arguably had the biggest focus of all Android manufacturers on the enterprise market.

The company has brought out explicitly business-targeted handsets such as the Motorola Pro and Droid Pro, and has built government-grade FIPS 140-2 encryption into recent smartphones such as the Razr. All in all, Motorola describes more than 20 of the phones and tablets it has released in the last three years as 'Business Ready'.

Handsets with this designation include productivity apps such as MotoCast for remote file access, Citrix GoToMeeting for collaboration and Smart Actions for task automation.

Meanwhile, Motorola's enterprise push now includes a trade-in scheme — available in the US only for now — in which business users or 'prosumers' can get up to $200 (£126) back when they buy a Motorola Business Ready smartphone. As part of the US drive, Motorola will also offer MotoAssist IT support for businesses setting up their handsets, the company said.