Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced developer event details this week aimed at independent creators of the programs so crucial to the success of both companies.

A few noteworthy items in the announcements. Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco will now include a track for iPhone developers. Four days after the release of the beta of its software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone, Apple said this week there has been over 100,000 downloads of the software. WWDC is June 9-13.

Conference attendees will likely be exposed to final, or very near-final, features of the finished SDK, which is due out by the end of June. It's clear from the program, that Apple expects interest from developers working on some pretty flashy applications (though not based on the Flash animation format which the iPhone currently doesn't support)!

The agenda says attendees will be able to learn from Apple graphics and media engineers about media-rich mobile applications and cutting-edge handheld games for the iPhone. Sessions will include techniques to animate user interfaces, render interactive 2D and 3D graphics in real-time and how to support video download and playback.

In addition to the iPhone, there will of course be plenty of sessions related to Apple's bread-and-butter Macintosh line and "Leopard" OS X 10.5 operating systems. A third track is focused on IT issues like setting up, integrating, deploying and managing Leopard, Leopard Server, and iPhone OS technologies in heterogeneous environments.

Google's new marquee event

Google's two-day Google I/O "Web Forward" conference is a new event slated for this May 28-29 in San Francisco. A Google spokesperson said its Developer Day will continue to be held, but the company plans to take it on the road as a worldwide tour set of events. "We expect Google I/O to be a marquee event and a hot ticket," said the spokesman.

Five tracks are planned, including a focus on Google's new Android mobile phone and OpenSocial social networking platforms. Java and Ajax tools, Web APIs (define) and other programming tools will be covered as well as sessions on developing applications that leverage Google Maps.

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More information on where OpenSocial, currently being deployed in a 0.7 release, is going will be covered in a session "What's Next for OpenSocial." The "Building an Android Application 101" session is designed to help developers new to the platform.

The Google spokesperson said to stay tuned for news between now and the event that promises to heighten developer interest further. "We have some exciting stuff in the pipeline," he said. "We haven't put all our cards on the table yet."