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It is interesting to note that while cloud based applications have been a lot slower to catch on then was anticipated a year ago, cloud-based storage has become an essential element in today’s mobile environment. The ability to save large amounts of information on the cloud where it can be accessed by any of your devices has really freed up space on things like netbooks, tablets and especially smartphones. It has also made the multi-device environment that most enterprises and power-users exist in possible, removing the syncing bottleneck that bogged everything down as recently as a couple years ago.

We have come a long way, and cloud-based storage has been leading the way. One of the early leaders in cloud based storage (as well as one of the most widely adopted), Box, has evolved into a robust cloud content management solution, serving as a central hub for business content, making your mission-critical data available to other people, platforms and devices; and today Box filled a lingering gap in their product line and releasing an Android app for accessing your Box account from Android 2.0 and later based smartphones, and eventually tablets. According to Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO of Box, the new Android App focuses on ease of use and sheer speed to improve the user experience. In fact he says it is the fastest Box app yet, on any platform. In addition, he promises that Box will work closely with other app developers to incorporate Box access into other Android business applications. Best of all, the Box for Android App is absolutely free in the Android Market.

Check out the press release after the jump to learn more.

Introducing Box for Android

Our core mission at Box is to make it easy for you to access, collaborate, and share your business content, wherever you are. Not surprisingly, our mobile platform is integral to making the “wherever” piece of that vision a reality. Our existing iPhone and iPad apps have been huge catalysts for adoption of Box, thanks to end users who want to be able access and share business information on-the-go from their favorite devices, and forward-thinking IT departments embracing multiplatform mobile strategies. We’ve seen more than 200,000 downloads of our iPhone and iPad apps, and content previews totaled more than 1 million in Q2 alone. We’re incredibly enthusiastic about the traction we’re seeing with Apple’s iOS platform, but we also recognize that individuals and businesses want choices.

We’re excited to announce that the Box app for Android is now available as a free app for all devices that support Android OS 2.0 and above. The app is fully optimized for the Android platform, making it easy to access and share all your business content faster than ever before (this is by far the speediest app we’ve ever built!), and because search is a cornerstone of Google and Android, we’ve built sophisticated search functionality into the application, with full text search capabilities for users on the Business plan. Lastly, the Box app lets you upload any photos, documents or media from your Android device directly to Box, basically eliminating any concerns about local storage limitations.

According to Forrester, 10% of enterprises plan to support Android devices in 2010, and with Android making up 33% of the device purchases in Q2, this number is sure to rise. Developing a customized Box app is just the first step: through our OpenBox Mobile platform, we’ll be working with third-party developers to incorporate Box’s content sharing, accessing and storage capabilities into other Android business applications.

We’ll continue to invest aggressively in our mobile platform, as we believe extensibility to mobile devices will be incredibly powerful and disruptive across most categories of business software. Today’s workforce and workplace are more mobile than ever before, but traditional business software offerings are trapped behind the firewall and tied to on-premise servers. By moving content management and collaboration into the cloud, the mobile enterprise is finally a reality, and people will be able to share and access to their information in any environment. At Box, we’re excited to have so many new devices and platforms emerging — they all represent opportunities in which we can provide a better and more connected experience to our customers.

Stay tuned for other big developments on the mobile front in Q4, and if you have an Android device, take our app for a spin and let us know what you think.