VLC Player to Hit Android Soon

Android mobile phone users should soon have the possibility to try out a new application on their devices, one that is already very popular among desktop users, namely the VLC Player.

Apparently, the developing team behind the application is hard at work with the building of this application, and says that it would be able to make it available for download sometime in early 2011.

Last week, in an interview with gigaom, lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf stated that they are aiming at making the solution available for end users in a matter of weeks.

This would be the first time when the popular VLC Player arrives on devices powered by Google's Android mobile operating system.

Currently, the application is already one of the most popular players on Windows, Mac and Linux-based machines.

However, the company made a move into the mobile space as well, with the release of VLC player for Apple's iPad sometime in September.

According to gigaom, while the development team has been hard at work with the release of an Android version of the application for a few months now, they met some difficulties in the fact that Android’s multimedia output libraries are in Java.

But, with the latest version of the Android NDK, which was released earlier this month, developers are able to more easily use native code for their applications for the platform.

The new NDK already offered the team the possibility to come up with two basic modules for audio and video output. “They need work, but we are approaching,” Kempf said.

The team managed to port most of the VLC libraries to the Android platform, though things might get delayed, in case issues with various Android-based devices out there emerge.

Hopefully, the long-discussed Android fragmentation won't be an issue here, and users of the platform would soon have the possibility to try-out the application on their mobile phones.