Google to train two million Indian app developers for free
Google has announced plans to train two million Indian app developers on its Android operating system over the next three years as the country is predicted to have the largest population of app developers in the world by 2018. The Google courses will be available as open source programmes and will be provided at no cost to the student, opening the opportunity to those who might not otherwise be able to afford the acquisition of recognised qualifications.

India’s large number of software developers has top smartphone companies like Google and Apple trying to coax them to work on their operating systems.

Google on Monday said it will be training, over the next three years, some 2 million developers in the country on its Android operating system.

In a similar move, Apple announced in May it will set up a facility in Bangalore by early next year to help developers on best practices and to improve the design, quality, and performance of their apps on the iOS platform. That announcement came during CEO Tim Cook's first visit to India.

India will have an estimated 4 million software developers by 2018, by then the largest population of developers in the world. Currently, less than 25 percent of these developers are trained to develop and build for the mobile platform.

In contrast, almost all the future Internet users in India and many of the world's emerging countries will be mobile only, Peter Lubbers, senior program manager at Google Developer Training, wrote in a blog post.

The key elements of the Google program are "end-to-end" Android training, setting up training channels, and an associate Android developer certification.

The Android Developer Fundamentals course, which teaches final-year computer science students with Java programming experience how to develop Android apps, will be made available across public and private universities. The course will also be available at training institutes of the National Skill Development Corporation of India, a public-private partnership for skills development.

The course will be available as open source to everyone for free, Google said. After completing the course and building the apps in the course, students should be ready to take the exam for the Associate Android Developer Certification, it added.