What software do i need to start designing mobile apps?

I want to start working on designing mobile apps for Iphone and Android. I do have coding experience but never targeted towards mobile application development. I would be having the need to get a new computer as this would be a personal project. What I would like to know is that, what all applications do i need to purchase/install on my computer to start developing mobile apps.

Hope my question is not too vague? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Sam,

You can use eclipse, which allows you to install an android SDK. This is for coding for android in Java.

Here's the links:

http://www.eclipse.org/
http://developer.android.com/...index.html

So, first of all you need a Mac in order to publish iOS apps. So go get one if you don't already have one.

If you want to make a native app for each platform, you'd grab XCode off the Mac App Store for iOS and download either Eclipse or IntelliJ with Google's plug-ins for Android. IOS apps are written in Objective-C and Android apps are written in Java. There's no cost for the development tools, but publishing an app to the iOS App Store requires a $99/yr developer membership. Publishing to the Google Play Store requires a $25 one time fee to set up your account.

There are also other options if you want to make a single app that works on both iOS and Android. Xamarin makes products that let you write both Android and iOS apps in C#- that's free if your app is under a certain size or $299/yr if your app is larger. For simpler apps, you can use PhoneGap which lets you write web applications (using HTML and JavaScript) that get bundled into apps for the various platforms.