Angry Birds: How one application signals the rise of Android apps.

Without a doubt, one of the most awaited titles for Android was a simple game. That game, of course, was Angry Birds.In fact, for the past 3 months, it has been one of the search terms that has brought the most notable traffic to our Apps channel here on TNW.

Then, a few days ago, it finally happened. The free beta of Angry Birds came to the Android Market (though apparently only for those running Android 2.2).

Over the past few days, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time playing the beta…for you know…testing purposes. While the game is great fun, of course, what it signals is considerably more important than what it is.

Since the launch of the Android Market, one of the major complaints has been in the lack of quality of Android applications. They’re, put simply, not nearly as polished as what we see on the Apple platform or even the offerings that we saw for WebOS. By and large, the Android platform has been left severely wanting for quality, useful applications that also looked good. For the most part, you were able to select 1 or 2 of those qualifiers, but rarely did you get all three.

A couple of months ago, however, I stumbled onto Homerun Battle 3D by Com2uS. It was the first time that I had seen an Android game that not only delivered on the strengths of the platform, but did so in a really great-looking wrapper. That was my first spark of hope, but I knew that it would take something much larger than Homerun Battle 3D in order to change the tide.

While there are a wealth of reasons as to why development for the Android hasn’t picked up speed, they’re simply not worth going into here. The point, more specifically, is that Rovio has now shown that it can be done, and done by a title that has held the #1 most downloaded spot around the world for quite some time.

I’m going to head out onto a limb and say that the Android Market will, quite soon, start seeing more titles that rival those available on the App Store. Rovio has shown that it can be done, and in doing so has raised the bar for other developers.