Qualcomm serves up Snapdragon SDK for Android devs

Qualcomm has moved to get developers writing apps specifically for Android devices running Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset, by giving them a software development kit for the platform.

The SDK was announced on Tuesday at the Uplinq 2012 developers' conference. According to Qualcomm, it will let coders plug their apps directly into the chipset's hardware capabilities.

"The most powerful applications in mobile are those that are tightly integrated with the underlying hardware," Qualcomm software strategy chief Rob Chandhok said in a statement. "Qualcomm is always striving to enable developers and device makers to differentiate their offerings via the unique capabilities found in its industry-leading Snapdragon mobile processors."

Qualcomm's latest mobile processor is the S4, which has provided good benchmark scores for handling Android 'Ice Cream Sandwich' 4.0. It is used in smartphones such as the HTC One X, as well as in some tablets, and its biggest competitor is Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 chipset.

The preview release of the Snapdragon SDK includes APIs for facial processing, burst photo capture, surround-sound recording hardware echo cancellation, indoor location and other features.

While Qualcomm and Nvidia are battling it out to be at the heart of the booming mobile device market, tapping into hardware-specific features such as these may sometimes mean that the resulting apps do not work equally across both the Snapdragon and Tegra platforms.

Android already has big problems with fragmentation, due to variables such as screen resolution and processing power, and Google is rumoured to be making an own-branded push into the tablet market this week, in a bid to steer clear of these issues.