Google Bringing Chrome Apps to iOS and Android

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Today Google has launched Chrome Apps for iOS and Android, which turns Chrome-based apps into native applications allowing them to be distributed on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.

Developers can access an early developer preview of Apache Cordova, an open source platform for building native mobile apps with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Google has made it simple for developers to wrap their existing Chrome app(s) with a native shell, transforming them into apps that can be sold on the App Store.

We provide a simple developer workflow for packaging a Chrome App natively for mobile platforms. You can run your Chrome App on a device or emulator using the command-line or an IDE. Alternatively, you can use the Chrome Apps Developer Tool to run your app on an Android device without the need to install an IDE or the mobile platform’s SDK.

Many of the native Chrome APIs will also be available to Chrome Apps running on mobile. Chrome mobile apps come following the September launch of Chrome apps that brought default offline support and allowed them to function as native applications. Back in December, Google brought Chrome apps to the Mac.

Developers can access the preview of Apache Cordova today. It may take some time before consumers see any Chrome apps in the App Store.

[via The Chromium Blog]

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