App discovery company Tapjoy announced a US$5 million fund to help developers port selected apps to Android, describing the Google-backed OS as “the go-to choice for many top app developers.”The Tapjoy Android Fund will offer monetary and development support to game developers looking to port existing products to Android. It will offer full porting and testing services to ensure that apps work on “all of the leading Android handsets,” and developers will have the option to use the company’s virtual currency monetisation engine, its game server for virtual economy management, its mobile analytics platform, and other value added services.

Tapjoy has received a large amount of attention of late, for its activities offering “incentivised downloads” in iOS games – customers receive certain amounts of virtual currencies, in return for downloading a different app. Apple has outlawed this practice, arguing that it represents developers cheating the system in order to gain a higher rank in its app charts, at which point they gain additional visibility and the number of non-incentivised downloads will increase. Its increased support for Android was seen as reflecting this, due to the less tightly-policed regime of Android Market, where no such ban is in place – among the tools it is promising “selected” developers is “a free, large-scale distribution campaign for new user acquisition through the company’s performance-based advertising network.”

According to All Things D, Tapjoy confirmed it is turning more of its focus to Android, but also noted that iOS is “strategically important” – despite the ban on pay-per-install, the company is sill “making good money” from the Apple platform.

Tapjoy said that apps are currently considered for support based on “the quality of the gaming experience and the talent of its developers.” It said that its ad-funded payment platform and app discovery marketplace is used by “hundreds” of Android developers.