Building for the next billion

This talk will focus on building apps for the next billion. We'll explore the market of these late adopters of Android smartphones and the conditions that differentiates them from most of our current target audience (Data affordability, Device affordability and Linguistic barriers).

We'll review the different steps taken by Google in bringing down the barriers including the introduction of Android Go. We'll discuss what Android Go is, why it was made, what changes it brings and its intended impact. We'll also cover the differences between Android Oreo (Go) and Android One and the impact of Android One so far since it's launch.

I'd also like to share a few experiences of mine while building Gramseva: Kisan, an app for farmers to inform them of the latest agricultural commodity prices, help them decide whether to stock or sell their produce, help them bargain with vendors and offer them an easy way to share and access this information at all times. I also had a chance to interview a few farmers from a village in Kalchinna, Uttar Pradesh, India and hope to share my experiences with them.

Then we'll look into a few steps we can take in building apps that are conscious of battery, memory, connectivity, localization and performance. The many considerations that developers need to take care while building apps for these smartphones and how the little things can make a difference. We'll explore tools we can use to profile our apps, simulate bad network connections and eventually optimize our apps. Alongside that, we'll also explore how to build Android Go compliant apps.