News broke last month that Google was working on bringing Chrome web apps to mobile devices, with a plan to have something ready in beta form by January. Google has delivered; the company released a tool set today for developers to port their apps to iOS and Android.
Chrome Apps are coming to iOS and Android
Built on Apache Cordova
As previously reported, Google has developed a compatibility layer using the open source Apache Cordova toolchain to allow programmers to wrap their apps in a native app shell and distribute the app on the App and Google Play stores. The tool also ports the necessary Chrome APIs the web apps would typically need on mobile, like notifications and access to local storage. The toolchain is currently an early preview, so improvements are surely on the way.
Google announced plans to bring Chrome Apps to the desktop back in September, and debuted apps for OS X last month.
Update: An earlier version of this post stated that Chrome Apps are not yet available for Windows. That was inaccurate, and the post has been updated.
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