The growth of mobile technologies was evolutionary in the progression of technology, it opened a revolution in computing in a quicker time frame. The easy availability and extreme mobility with rich set of applications made smartphones an inevitable tool for students. This is the high time for academic domain to go for innovative teaching practices with the inclusion of mobile technologies to bridge the gap between academia and industry in a considerable manner. This paper is aimed to introduce an innovative approach of learning computer programming on smartphone platform. The proposed approach intends to introduce a new pedagogy of teaching programming on a platform by developing applications instead of teaching a programming language for creating applications. The main premise of this practice is the introduction of a tailored module to teach Java programming language while developing apps for a leading mobile platform-Android. The proposed module can be an appropriate alternative for the module 'Introduction to programming' of computer science curriculum across the globe. Pilot implementation has been done in one of the premier higher education centres of Gulf Council Country (GCC). An ontology based implementation of the proposed module ensures its consistency in delivery and the future work will focus more in this direction. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.