Found out (from the above link) about android basing its new peripheral API on the arduino and was wondering if there was any more information about it.
I looked at the Android Open Accessory page about it but pretty much all I was able to gather was that I should buy a specific shield for my arduino from a Japanese website for 31,000 yen.
Is there something I'm missing here or am I on the right track?
This is a good starting point.
You just need a USB master shield.
Amarino developed a bluetooth api to handle events to and from arduino and android. It's basically a glorified serial parser but it works well and is easy to use. They also have a somewhat active support group if I'm not mistaken.
You can use ready solution instead of Amarino. ArduinoCommander app (https://market.android.com/details?id=name.antonsmirnov.android.arduinocommander), bluetooth shield and StandardFirmata sketch.