Israeli mobile app development company Anywhere Software has used this week’s Mobile World Congress exhibition in Barcelona, Spain, to launch its Basic4android development environment for developers of Google Android-based applications.

Basic4android aims to bring new mobile application developers including those who lack previous experience in creating Android apps into the fold with a language that is similar to Visual Basic with additional support for objects. All its compiled applications are native Android applications and there are no extra runtimes or dependencies.

"With Google’s Android becoming the world’s leading smartphone platform, a growing number of developers are looking for an easy and powerful way to develop public and private applications for Android-based devices," said Erel Uziel, CEO of Anywhere Software. "Basic4android allows these developers to easily create native and market-compatible applications without having to write any XML, achieving a performance that is similar to Java written applications."

"Basic4android provides developers with the true look and feel of an Android phone, eliminating the need for learning Eclipse and Java," said Robert Brenner CEO of Requio Web Design, an Okinawa, Japan-based developer of Android astronomical applications. "Moreover, both the product support and the online community are outstanding."

Basic4android supports Android v1.6 and above including tablets and contains a GUI designer with built-in support for multiple screens. To date the company says that it has been used to develop a variety of advanced applications including: SQL databases, GPS, Serial ports (Bluetooth), Camera, XML parsing, Web services (HTTP), JSON, Animations, Network (TCP/IP ), Text To Speech (TTS), Voice Recognition, WebView, AdMob (ads) and Graphics and Services (background tasks).