Can Average People Develop an Android App?

Licensing

You do not need to pay any special licensing fees to develop Android apps, load them onto your Android devices or submit them to Google Play. You can download all the software libraries you'll need to write source code for Android apps from Google's Android Developers website (link in Resources) for free. The developers site is also where you get the packager that lets you turn your compiled program files into an app Android devices can run as well as an emulator for testing your apps in a virtual Android environment.

Coding

While you don't need any special licenses or permission from Google to develop Android apps, you will need to know how to program in Java or C++. Java applications are the norm for Android apps and the language for which you will find the largest number of libraries and programming tools. However, Google also provides C++ Android development kits for programmers who want to write low-level code to optimize their app execution. In addition to knowing how to program, you will need to learn how to develop for Android specifically. Learning Android development is necessary not only for your apps to work at all but also to fully utilize device and operating system features.

Development Tools

The SDK libraries that Google offers for you to develop Android apps have the best integration with the Eclipse's free integrated development environment for the Java language. However, you can also manually import the libraries into other IDEs like NetBeans or IntelliJ IDEA. Google is also developing its own development for Android development called Android Studio.

Learning Android Development

There are plenty of resources on the Internet to help you learn how to develop Android apps without a formal computer science education. You can get started with Java programming from a series of tutorials from Oracle, online materials from NetBeans or free course material from MIT's OpenCourseware. Google's developers site also has material to help people who know how to program start creating apps specifically for Android.