REALM releases its developer-friendly mobile database on Android

 -Arkodyuti Saha & Aaditya Raj

'Realm' has released the Android version of its mobile-database solution for developers, which soft-launched on iOS over the summers. The open-source library bucks the trend of cloud-based databases by storing information on your device.

Since launching on iOS, Realm has attracted 20,000 developers to its product in just a short few weeks. Apps like Cloth and Breeze have already shipped with Realm inside. The team began development in 2011 and graduated from the Summer ’11 Y Combinator class.

Realm claims that its solution reduces the development time of an app by as much as half. Once deployed, the code has a smaller footprint and runs faster queries than its competitors.

While Realm’s core product is open-source, the company also sells enterprise software licenses. For instance, Zynga hired Realm back in 2012 to build a database that allowed it to shut down a number of cloud clusters required by its previous solution.