I know that this isn’t easily feasible right now due to the Davlik VM not having the required support for AWT and Swing, but seeing that Apache has moved Harmony (java interpreter used by Davlik) to the attic and Oracle is pushing hard to have Android devices using a full fledged Java SE we might see AWT and Swing support in the future. Also, there have been a few tech demos running JavaFX on Android tablets, so there is always that possibility.
tl;dr: Would there be considerations for building a native Android client if it became technically feasible?
There are probably a number of options. We’re pretty interested/excited in what they’ve done with JavaFX, and are keeping a close eye on how that develops. At JavaOne they basically said that along the time frame of Java 8 is when FX should really come into its own, in regards to wider multi-platform support. We think this would be the way to go for native mobile clients, instead of hoping for Swing support.
We currently have a rough two-stage plan for the mobile module: 1) native rendering apps, using the current comm methodology (perhaps with camera support for barcodes) and 2) Full native apps (with custom window rendering, or perhaps new types of windows).
We don’t really have a time frame yet for these, but I think we’d like to see at least #1 done relatively soon.
Regards,