I've recently done some Java programming for an android app (though my question is not android specific), and was wondering if what I was doing was just a lot less complicated, but generally the same as what a professional mobile app designer would do.I kind of asssumed that an app designer working for, say, the BBC would use an expensive software package, and maybe a different language.So my question is what language would they be using? Maybe they would use one that would work for both Android and iOS? 
What languages are used by professional mobile app designers?
programming languages;applications
There are frameworks/toolkits out there that allow you to develop cross-platform for various mobile platforms, in various languages.For example, Xamarin's MonoTouch is a framework that allows you to write an app in C# and then build an application for iOS or Android. It's also the only cross-platform kit I know of that allows you to share code for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.Corona lets you use Lua, a scripting language, but I think it supports Android and iOS only.A more specialized platform is Unity, which allows you to use Boo, C#, or an EMCAScript-based (think Javascript) language to build games and target Android, iOS, as well as web browsers and console systems.If you stick with being platform-specific, the main way to write apps for iOS is Objective-C, though you can also use Objective C++.On Android, you can write applications in a JVM language like Java, but you can also alternatives like Scala or Clojure if that floats your boat. You can also go native on those respective platforms. Android, for example, provides the Native Development Kit, which allows you to write apps with native code.For Windows Phone 7, you can use a CLR language. This primarily means C#, but you could also use a more exotic language, like F#.