Why Developers Still Prefer iOS To Android 614
An anonymous reader writes "Google Chariman Eric Schmidt recently addressed an Android user lamenting the fact that that mobile apps are often released on Apple's iOS platform well before they finally reach Android. Schmidt cooly and curiously explained that this dynamic will change in just 6 months. Here's why he's wrong. Though Google brags about the total number of Android users, developers care about certain kinds of users (those that pay for apps). A similar dynamic can be found in television advertising, where advertisers will more money for ad spots on less popular shows in order to reach desirable demographics, even though other programs may have many millions of more viewers."
Android has many problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Now the thing is, this targeting translates badly to applications and games. When user plays games, he isn't interested in anything else. It's completely different situation to some where the user is actively looking for something. This is why app developers make better money by selling their apps or games. However, Android users aren't as willing to spend as iOS users. They have even got used to the idea of getting their apps for free with advertising. But because advertising isn't really effective for such, Android app space in general suffers badly. On top of that you have to deal with fragmented devices and Google's ignorance regarding their app store. You can buy gift cards for iTunes, but you cannot for Android store, so you're out of luck if you don't have credit card. So you have an userbase with fragmented market, increased support costs, users without ability to pay for apps even if they had cash and the general culture that expects free apps with ads where ads just don't work.
The funny thing is that even Windows Phone market has comparatively more developers, apps and games. Microsoft has went at great lengths to make app developing for WP7 pleasant experience. They provide great tools, XNA, Silverlight and you can code with
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$50 per click? Citation please, because my bullshit alert is going off. We sell very high ticket items and have for over 2 decades, and have been a part of Overture (now yahoo), and Google since their inception. $1 a click is pretty high dollar, and we put up to twice that at times, but usually less. I would love to hear who pays fifty bucks a click.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Informative)
I also remember that some years ago there was lawyers paying really high clicks for some really specific cases. I think it was targeting some people who got major health problems as result of some company. They paid for those clicks really much because the amount of money they got from settlements etc was so good.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this explain why, when you lay an iOS and an Android app side by side, the iPhone one almost always appears more polished?
Usually the function is the same, but the one on iOS will show screen wipes graphically smooth, the animation is smooth, the interface is simpler because you don't rely on users to know they need to check the "menu" button for a bunch of options and suboptions.
In some cases (like with Yahoo's fantasy offerings) the iOS app is pretty good, and the android one is just a link to a mobile site basically. I've always wondered why these things are.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a combination of non-GPU-accelerated interfaces on many Android devices and the fact that Android doesn't provide as robust or helpful a GUI API (transitions, effects, widgets, events, GUI management in general) as iOS.
It simply takes more work to make an app look good on Android, and even then it'll still "feel" worse because everything's being rendered in the CPU.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Android has many problems (Score:4, Informative)
The short reason is that Android was first conceived as a Blackberry competitor, with most input coming from a keyboard. High-priority interface responsiveness wasn't as much a concern in that environment. The Android simulator used to look like this [imgur.com]. The iPhone came out and blew everyone away, made touchscreens all the rage, and Android changed to compete. The fact 2011 Android interface responsiveness is not competitive with the 2007 iPhone is something of an embarrassment, in my opinion, but the technical foundation was just not designed to deliver that kind of experience, while iOS was designed from the ground up to support it (every interface element is backed by a GPU-accelerated Core Animation layer).
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iOS was designed from the ground up to support it (every interface element is backed by a GPU-accelerated Core Animation layer).
This is changing within Android -- Honeycomb and ICS make much better and more extensive use of GPU acceleration. There's still some work to do, but using ICS after GB is a massive leap forwards.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the original version of Android was specifically for blackberry-style devices with a physical keyboard and some kind of d-pad like interface.
Read his post again, did he say that Android copied Apple anywhere? No, he pointed out valid underlying architectural and business reasons why these issues exist on Android devices.
Yes, Android today is designed for many different form factors and input methods. But ultimately when you design for many different things, you end up building to a lowest common denominator, and sacrifices are made. I think you argued his point for him actually. Since Apple requires all their devices to have GPU-acceleration, IOS benefits. Android doesn't require it, and so you have to build your apps to specifically take advantage of it. By targeting cheap devices, they sacrificed user experience.
Oh, and considering how secretive Apple is, and that Android was announced before the iPhone, who else would Android be competing agains in the pre-iPhone marketplace? The playing field was Symbian (very small developer base) Palm (already dying as they started shipping WinMobile devices) Microsoft (with their very painful an kludgy Mobile OS which has since been killed) and Blackberry. Blackberry was the smartphone leader by a very large margin before the iPhone appeared.
Stop pushing anti-Apple revisionist history. It's just as bad as pro-Apple revisionist history.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and considering how secretive Apple is, and that Android was announced before the iPhone, who else would Android be competing agains in the pre-iPhone marketplace?
Don't forget that Eric Schmidt was on the board at Apple while also CEO at Google. Right after the iPhone was announced he stated that he had to step down due to a possible conflict of interest. So he was fully aware of what was happening with the iPhone long before everyone at RIM and Microsoft.
And this is why Jobs was so pissed at Google - Schmidt was given insider knowledge of the iPhone and then 4 months after the iPhone is release, Android is here. I know there are plenty of great programmers at Google but it takes more then 4 months to design such a UI. Even if they based it on the original iPhone announcement (and not the physical phone), it's still only 11 months - not enough time.
So Android did have the iPhone in mind when it was being designed, but only in the latter part if it's development. I don't agree with the poster to whom you replied, but Google wasn't in the dark when it comes to the development of the iPhone.
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you're barking at the wrong tree.
take a look at old j2me sdk's and the philosophy on which savaje was built on if you want something that was happening years before android that had almost 1:1 pixel and philosophical ideas of android.
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Android = J2ME + the more advanced profiles for it, without paying a license fee, which is why Oracle are suing Google.
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I hear this (and the other side, "Apple is a software company with hardware to support it") all the time. It's wrong wrong wrong.
Apple is an Experience company. They sell the whole platform, with their goals to be the whole platform. Think Nintendo, XBox, or PlayStation, not Microsoft or Sony. Think Roku and Slingbox, not Toshiba or Ado
Re:Android has many problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Before Android bought it, the only Android prototype was a Blackberry clone. After the acquisition, Google began designing on two separate systems--one based upon the prototype with a keyboard, and one with just a touchscreen. The clone was the focus, to try to get something to market as soon as possible. The touchscreen version was considered a long-term goal. I doubt very seriously that full touch-screen considerations were being made on a device whose main purpose (for the company) is to get something to market. Google has shown a willingness to design separate product lines and integrate them later. It's extremely likely that this was the plan.
When Apple introduced the first iPhone, Google saw the writing on the wall and scrapped the Blackberry clone to focus all its Android efforts on a touchscreen version.
All that is largely irrelevant to the point at hand, though. No matter the history of the code, Google did design what is now the current design of Android with touchscreens in mind. And that fact makes it that much worse that they can't achieve the responsiveness of an iPhone today, 4 years later.
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What you say is basically right, but your timing s a bit off. Here's the video showing what you say, but it dates from 10 months after the iPhone was announced. The primitive state of the touch version suggests development of that started after the iPhone announcement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1FJHYqE0RDg# [youtube.com]!
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The fact is Android was designed to run on multiple platforms.
And the fact is that anything that is designed to run on multiple platforms will almost certainly run poorly on your particular platform in some way, shape, or form. The fact is that Apple has made the proper decision in limiting the number and kind of devices they run on. Will Apple always have the highest number of units shipped? No. Will they have better customer satisfaction and less support costs leading to higher margins? Yes.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Your sig might have something to do with it...........
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Informative)
There [google.com] are [google.com] a couple of insightful posts by a Google engineer addressing this specific myth. The original reddit comment, where your comment originally came from, generated a very interesting discussion on the subject over at G+.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice links. Interesting how bonch presumes Google had to look around for something to measure themselves against of type "gadget". In truth, they were striving to be the opposite of Facebook and Microsoft, on the presumption that might work out OK in the long run:
Here's the deep analysis of the Blackberry internals, reading between the lines with psychic divination:
How to spot a Blackberry competitor? It's designed around having multiple windows on the screen at the same time:
It's probably true that Apple has a near monopoly on the early adopter spendoids. I don't think there are a lot more people out there lining up to be so loose with their cash. They are already at the apogee of milking their traditional 10% and these people will soon take their short attention spans to whatever Apple invents next. With Apple, value is rarely time invariant: one part useful, two parts sooner and sexier. Mature market segments tend to deflate the later terms.
Six months is too soon, but I'll be interested to check back on how this pans out a year from now.
Insane to consider Apple success as early adoption (Score:3)
It's probably true that Apple has a near monopoly on the early adopter spendoids. I don't think there are a lot more people out there lining up to be so loose with their cash. They are already at the apogee of milking their traditional 10%
I don't think you understand what is happening at all. Apple's "traditional" market share in the same space as the iPhone is the iPod at around 80-90%. And a vast majority of the phone market remains to convert to smartphone use. Even if your guess of 10% were accurate
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Re:Android has many problems (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Android has many problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Screen wipes are now polished? I detract 100 points from them- they're pointless, annoying, and a waste of my time. That looks like a giant point in Android's favor to me.
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They're not a waste of time. They give a user a sense of structure in an app. For example in a drill down app, master lists are on the left, detail is on the right, just as they might be on a PC screen. But as a phone screen is too small to display both at once, animated transitions give that sense, whilst only displaying a part of the full picture.
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the interface is simpler because you don't rely on users to know they need to check the "menu" button for a bunch of options and suboptions.
This seems a rather subjective classification -- some of us like having a dedicated menu button, rather than sacrificing precious screen real-estate. In my opinion it makes for much better UI design, as the user always knows where to access options for an app, rather than searching for some dinky little settings icon that may or may not be there ...
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I'm sorry, but you're out of your depth here and should probably stop at this point...
What is your measure for stating that "Apple spends more time on developing their operating systems than Linux developers and/or Microsoft" because the statement is nonsensical.
Firstly, Apple do NOT develop their own entire operating system, they actually use a FreeBSD UNIX core with some of their own stuff on top of it. Much of that FreeBSD core comes from Open Source development which also gets ported across to work on G
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Installing software on Linux distributions is a huge pain in the ass.
Was a huge pain in the ass, a long time ago. Now there are even pretty "App Store" package managers that will suggest applications for you, and even sell you commercial ones. Sometimes I have to add a repository for an extra package (something you can't do on iOS without jailbreaking it, right?).
Very occasionally I have to build something from sources (but only because I'm a software developer ; non-technical people would almost never have to do this). This is usually as simple as running ./configure and p
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Apple and Google are neck [venturebeat.com] and neck [tipb.com] in terms of absolute app downloads. But what I meant was again "selling" in terms of making money. Far more apps downloaded on iOS are purchased apps [techspot.com] (to my mind a free app is not really a "sale").
I don't really see Androids numbers compared to Apple increasing much more as WP7 starts to eat into Android market share next year. Laugh all you want but you'll remember what I said a year from now...
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows Phone market has comparatively more developers, apps and games.
False.
And while the amount of users as large as Android or iOS
False.
(I won't even bother with references, because it is literally 10 seconds away in Google. Sapienti sat.)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem with WP7 today is that it's very hard to write code for it that would be portable to other platforms. With iOS and Android, you can write common code in C or C++, and only need to handle UI differently. In case of games, you pretty much write the whole thing in C++ with a few platform-specific hooks. But WP7 does not support C++, and the only thing it supports - .NET languages - is not well supported by other platforms. Sure, there's MonoTouch and MonoDroid, but they are too expensive - for this market, especially for hobby developers, $400 for each additional platform is a lot.
Given that WP7 is significantly less popular, in terms of sheer user count, than either Android and iOS, there's no way it can be the first platform being targeted. So, it has to adapt to allow easy porting of code from other, better established mobile platforms, before it can have considerable success with developers.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Informative)
There were two, actually - the first one (VS2002 and VS2003) was "C++ with managed extensions" - that was pretty nasty in more ways than one could imagine, and was hastily scrapped. The new one that's still alive (VS2005+) is C++/CLI.
However, it's important to understand what "compiles to .NET" actually means. VC++ compiler can compile pretty much any random C++ code to IL bytecode, but to do that it needs to use bytecodes which are not memory-safe ("not verifiable", in .NET parlance) - think pointer arithmetics and other such things. IL itself is expressive enough to allow for such things, and the resulting code is architecture-independent, and is JIT-compiled and runs under the VM just the same. So, yes, you can take a C++ library as is, and run it in .NET. The catch is that it cannot be sandboxed. Therefore, it does not run on Windows Phone (or Silverlight), because those only allow for verifiable IL, such that it can be sandboxed.
Then there's C++/CLI, which is a set of language extensions to C++ that lets you access .NET APIs, and define your own - keywords like "ref class" and "gcnew". If you write code using only those language extensions, you can use /clr:pure compiler switch to request the compiler to produce verifiable, sandboxable IL. That runs on WP7 just fine, but in that mode, you can't use most features of regular C++ - no arrays, no pointers, no regular classes etc. Basically, what you end up with is a subset of C# with more C++-like syntax. Obviously, this is completely useless from portability perspective - you can't run any existing C++ code with this.
There is a way to use this mode to write code that's portable between WP7 and other platforms if you do it from the get go. I briefly described it in one of my old Slashdot post; basically, the idea is to define a bunch of macros such that they expand, alternatively, to C++/CLI constructs when compiling for WP7, or to regular C++ constructs with identical meaning when compiling for everything else (with a support library for smart pointers, strings and such that matches C++/CLI semantics). You still end up with a rather limited subset of C++ - about as expressive as C# or Java with C++-style templates - but it's actually possible to write something useful in it, and have it run on all platforms. However, this is only applicable to any code that you would be writing yourself there and then - i.e. it doesn't solve the problem with numerous existing C/C++ libraries, and it doesn't solve the problem with porting existing iOS or Android apps. Besides, given the current market penetration of WP7, it is likely still too much effort for too little gain.
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Insightful)
How does that help you when there is no installed base? Even if every user buys your app, when there are no users you make no sales. On top of that, your points are self defeating: If by some miracle they actually gained some market share then other developers would follow the users, and you would immediately lose the advantage of the lack of competition.
There is just no incentive to be an early adopter of WP7, which is why it hasn't (and won't) go anywhere. There need to be users before you can get developers, and there need to be developers before you can get users. They need some actual advantage over the existing competition in order to bootstrap, like Apple had with the original iPhone or Google has by making Android free, but now those are the baseline and Microsoft doesn't have anything that can beat them in a sufficiently drastic way to overcome the lack of apps. Plus, nobody likes Microsoft on general principles.
On top of that, you can throw all of the "Apple is better than Google because diversity sucks" arguments at them: Who wants to promote the establishment of another app store and development platform? All that does is create more work for developers. Why should they promote such wasteful duplication of their own effort by producing apps for a platform that presently has no significant number of users?
Re:Android has many problems (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been paid to sit around waiting for it to be posted so he could say something nice about Microsoft. It's officially called "online reputation management [wikipedia.org]" but it's essentially someone who's paid to tote the company line and up-sell the brand. They'll have several accounts and down-mod anyone that speaks ill of the company (or poster) For instance, I'd wager they have a registered account to see the incoming stories and it gives them time to come up with some advertisement for the release post. (AKA, the long post about how Microsoft is great. This one is a "karma bump" that basically tells you what everyone already knows to build up the account karma which they use to get the karma point bonuses so more people view it and down-mod dissenting opinion.)
This is the second account that I'm aware of that these people use (CmdrPony was mentioned as their previous, I do not know of the ones previous). The last account they basically came out and said they will create a new account because someone will eventually karma bomb them by down-voting every post they can to try to reduce the amount of trolling by this account. The new account will build up karma by posting agreeable comments, then start towing the line.
Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:4, Insightful)
Why Developers Still Prefer iOS To Android
Is there something inherently better with iOS development? Is the API better written? Is there some technological inferiority to Android? Is it cheaper to buy the development tools for iOS?
Oh, I see. What you meant to say is:
Why Publishers Still Prefer iOS To Android
And even that's sort of not very accurate. I mean, there are plenty of apps that are free and are on both Android and iOS like advertising based apps that want you to read some website's stories. And they just want to target the most users, not the most users who shell out money. So maybe it should be:
Why Revenue Seekers Still Prefer iOS To Android
Not everyone developing apps depends on that as their revenue stream.
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there something inherently better with iOS development? Is the API better written? Is there some technological inferiority to Android? Is it cheaper to buy the development tools for iOS?
FTFA
Unfortunately for Google, this is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to the uphill battle they face in the fight for developers. Clunkier development tools for Android have been on ongoing problem, and let's not forget about the vast number of scamware, crapware and malware apps that permeate through the Android Marketplace. The lack of an approval process for apps on Android certainly has its benefits, but letâ(TM)s not forget thereâ(TM)s also a downside to being open.
So you mean I get to use lousier development tools, potentially have my app hijacked by scammers looking to repackage my app as malware AND deal with fragmentation?
SIGN ME UP!
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:5, Insightful)
Android vs iOS. The same is happening here with the Android platform having a significantly larger userbase.
But I think this is more because Android is "free" as in "beer", not "free" as in "free speech".
Very few people buy Android because they can download the source code for it (some of it), or because they can root it and run a custom version of Android.
Most people buy it because the device is at a better pricepoint than the iPhone or has features/formfactor that they want.
I love my Android device, but think IOS is more polished and runs better. But I don't want to give up my keyboard.
Odd definition of Open (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows PC vs Macintosh. The more open platform won.
I don't recall Linux winning. Windows to Mac, both are almost as closed.
Wait, actually even that is not true. OS X is based on Darwin which is open source, and also BSD which is open source - and a lot of the things it ships with (like Apache or Bash) are open source.
So doesn't in fact history tell us here that closed won definitively?
Android vs iOS. The same is happening here with the Android platform having a significantly larger userbase.
Aha, but the tricky thing is defining what a smartphone user really is. If it's someone that merely owns a smartphone, Android is "winning". But if it's users that actually use smart phones as, well, smart phones - it would appear iOS is winning handily by any metric (app sales, developer interest, percentage of users on web logs).
Give it a couple more years. Apple will be a fading memory.
I DARE you to short Apple. It is a rising behemoth that is only just at the start of REAL growth.
And yes, I have bought stock - at varying levels since $30...
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:5, Interesting)
> Is there something inherently better with iOS development? Is the API better written? Is there some technological inferiority to Android? Is it cheaper to buy the development tools for iOS?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Xcode is a wonderful IDE, and with things like CLANG/LLVM and LLDB it's only getting better. Cocoa and Cocoa Touch are insanely great APIs and Objective C kicks the shit out of Java in terms of readability and performance. The development experience for iOS is much, much more streamlined and defined then Android.
I'm not even sure if it's worth mentioning the fact that Google (and it's associates) actively brag about a new Android device every week now- with different specs, hardware, and screen resolutions. Trying to support a moving target like Android is a nightmare, so you might as well pick the top 5 phones and make sure your stuff works on those- and forget about the five thousand other devices out there (which may or may not work).
Comparing iOS to Android is like comparing the Xbox 360 to a PC. You get a stable and well defined platform with one, and a crapshoot with the other.
-AC
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw the language. Interface builder rocks. Using XML files with no WYSIWYG editor? Screw that.
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Spot on! I have been learning Xcode 4.2 and it's a joy to use! Objective C is fairly simple and Interface Builder is a snap to use. Why anyone would bother with hand editing XML files is beyond me.
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It's beyond me too. I remember when I went to classes to learn AutoCAD. Back in those days, much of the editing was with a keyboard. Of course things got better as more things were editable with mouse, stylus or trackball.
Some people of course would like to pretend some machismo superiority from editing 3D models with a keyboard. But the truth is that direct manipulation using other devices is far better.
Is that it? Does editing XML files for user interfaces make you feel like a grown up? Even though the r
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:5, Interesting)
Why Developers Still Prefer iOS To Android
Is there something inherently better with iOS development?
Yes. iOS has an integrated development environment including debugging tools that allow on the fly changes to the code while debugging.
Is the API better written?
Yes. The iOS API is more feature rich and provides things like low latency audio.
Is there some technological inferiority to Android? Is it cheaper to buy the development tools for iOS?
Yes, as mentioned above, there is no low latency audio support and the interface has a normal priority instead of high priority which is one of the major reasons why the UI on android phones feels sluggish at times.
Android did not even have a native SDK until recently and you were forced to write everything against the Dalvik JVM.
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the iOS APIs are derivatives of the very well tested, designed, and readable NS (NextStep) APIs that have been in production for over twenty years. Apple adds new APIs with every release, yet they still follow the design patterns and methodologies of the older application interfaces, making learning new ones quite easy.
With Objective C finally receiving easier memory management (yes, it was never terribly hard but it was at times frustrating), new developers, especially Java developers, can start rolling out code relatively quickly. As a point of history, Java's developers apparently did look at Objective-C as one of their primary influences. Personally, I find Objective-C much easier to code in then Java, and the clear nature of Apple's APIs combined with very, very strong development tools makes me much prefer iOS development over Android
There's an added benefit of iOS development which isn't commonly mentioned - it's relatively easy to port iOS code over to Mac OS X, allowing you to reach a broad and lucrative environment, leveraging your previous work.
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Nitpicks:
- The UNIX API is called POSIX; glibc is just an implementation of it, and it's not what Android uses (they use Bionic [wikipedia.org]).
- The main Android API is not POSIX since people use Java, they have an API based on a subset of the official Java API, implemented by Apache Harmony [wikipedia.org].
- The FSF doesn't work on glibc, the GNU project does. The FSF sponsors them.
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No, it's not, because it's an objective fact rather than attitude. It doesn't matter whether an event handler executes for 10 microseconds or for 100. What matters is that it doesn't execute for >10ms or so. That is big enough that difference between native and managed won't matter - the only way you can make it run that long either way is to do some CPU-heavy computation there, or do some blocking I/O.
Case in point: WP7 has managed code only (at least for third party apps), yet its UI doesn't lag.
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"tldr; Android is basically a web browser that's also a phone, while iOS is a computer that's also a phone."
And you're basing that on the lack of low latency audio capabilities? I'm not quite sure I agree with you - Android has many traits that make it more of a computer OS than iOS... things like the file-system, or real-time multitasking. iOS is more polished and a joy to look at, but actually doing anything on the devices pisses me off to no end. Then again, I'm not saying that Android's way is better -
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You can state that not everyone developing apps depends on that revenue stream, but the fact that, according to Flurry Analytics, Android developer share has actually declined over the course of the year suggests most do.
Re:Really Has Nothing to Do with Development (Score:4, Interesting)
Others have already answered this, but I feel it needs to be said again:
YES.
Maybe not exactly yes to the last bit, but it is cheaper to develop non-trivial commercial apps for iOS than Android, more often than not. The Apple developer fee is so tiny as not to be worth considering when compared with developer time. The extra testing necessary for Android would alone pay the developer fee many times over, and that's if development itself didn't generally take longer (and it most certainly does).
More business model than development (Score:3)
If you plan to make money on your app via:
* Advertising
* Demographic data collection
you'll lean toward Android - more users, more support from Google, no interference from Apple.
If you plan to make money from people who pay for software, you'll go for iOS.
Schmidt may be right - "free" has a definite mass appeal.
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you'll lean toward Android - more users, more support from Google, no interference from Apple.
More users of Android phones. Less users of Android apps. And as it's app distribution you want to maximise, iOS is better.
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Exactly what I was thinking. Just as I was thinking the *OBVIOUS* solution would be to add a built in scripting language that isn't based on C, but on some higher level programming language.
$599 plus $99 per year (Score:4, Insightful)
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not surprising why app developers are betting on iOS over Android. According to the Flurry Analytics study, they make four times as much money on iOS [flurry.com]. Developers are also concerned about fragmentation, the lack of store curation, and lower penetration of Google Checkout among Android users compared to iOS users, who are always payment enabled through their iTunes accounts.
Android's target demographic is hardcore techies combined with budget buyers unconcerned with smartphone quality. It actually makes very little money for Google, while iOS is generating obscene profits for Apple. Slashdot still fetishes marketshare as if it's the only metric that matters, but Android is actually like a whole bunch of operating systems with different capabilities.
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It actually makes very little money for Google, while iOS is generating obscene profits for Apple.
The funny thing is that Android probably makes Microsoft more money than for Google. Microsoft gets something like $444 million annually from Android and they don't even need to develop it.
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This has nothing to do with Google giving the OS away for free. Obv.
-GiH
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Which will quickly massively outnumber Apple's demographic. Apple will be a major player for a while yet, but they're pursuing a dead end, I think. Don't know if it's a year or a couple years before they lose their perception as market leader, but it's clearly going to happen.
I don't mean this as trolling against Apple; they've done some amazing stuff. I just think they have no realistic hope of outcompeting Android at this point. You can't occupy 'high end' and 'numerically dominant' niches at the same time...
The Desktop Mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
Android's target demographic is hardcore techies combined with budget buyers unconcerned with smartphone quality.
Which will quickly massively outnumber Apple's demographic.
What would you base that assessment on? If that were true why would lInux, which had exactly the same combination of possible buyers (techies plus people seeking really budget computers) not have beaten Windows long ago?
It's amazing to me that so many computer literate people here are utterly unwilling to see the impact that software has on the platforms people chose to use.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
That's TFA's whole point - Apple occupies the more important niche, "most lucrative/remunerative". Given the numbers in TFA, Android would have to outnumber Apple by almost fifty-to-one to equate to the same income to developers. But, because of Android's fragmentation, it's actually even worse for the developers. Think hundreds-to-one or thousands-to-one to get just one Android phone with the market penetration of the iPhone, and even then the user demographics will still skew radically differently.
But that's pretty much all you have, because you missed the whole point of the article entirely.
Re:Hey hold on there... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty sure I included you when I mentioned the hardcore techies. Folks like you are the only ones who "treasure freedom" and lash out angrily at Apple for daring to put constraints on your beloved software tweaking habits. You represent a minority of Android's demographic, with the rest coming from budget smartphone buyers.
Because that's how a business works?
Of course. Google shares those figures annually. Advertising is about 97% of their revenue, which is over $8 billion.
No, Google makes relatively little money from Android, and that's according to Google. I have no where you're getting the idea that they're making more money than Apple is from iOS, because that contradicts every hard number available.
Re:Hey hold on there... (Score:4, Informative)
The Galaxy S II was the best selling device last round - even outselling the iPhone 4S.
The iPhone 4S has only been out 2 months. Too early for stats. The Galaxy S II certainly didn't outsell the iPhone (4). You're confused with the sales of the entire range of Samsung, which did outsell the iPhone. But that includes around 50 different Samsung phones, including many free with a contract ones.
I'm afraid your appraisal of Android as being a generation ahead of iPhone is as deluded as your misunderstanding of sales figures.
Re: (Score:3)
Qt (Score:5, Insightful)
Google should buy Qt from Nokia and use that toolkit as the basis for Android apps. It is already efficient as hell on smartphones (Meego and Symbian), and uses C++ as its programming language. No more worries about Oracle lawsuits, excellent programming environment. Mod this up.
Re:Qt (Score:5, Insightful)
You shouldn't say "mod this up" in your own post. You actually have an excellent idea, and people who might otherwise mod it up without you telling them to do so will be less inclined to because nobody likes to be told what to do.
Re:Qt (Score:4, Funny)
Mod this up
Re:Qt (Score:4, Funny)
Mod this up
Android is not a viable proposition (Score:3, Informative)
For developers, that is. Android is a one size fits all approach, but not all Android phones can run all games, some are too weak. This causes developers headaches, bad reviews on their games, etc. And Android Market is not secure like iTunes, the apps don't go through a vetting process before they are put on the market, like iTunes does for their apps. So malicious apps are out there. Unlike iOS. Android is the new Windows... Sure it'll sell well, but Apple can give assurances on security, and the corporate sector will never adopt Android so it will remain the poor man's iPhone and the domain of geeks who can't face the fact that iOS is actually very good.
Now... flame away :)
Re: (Score:3)
It's true that often on Android games you'll see ratings all very high or very low, and the very low ones are usually "It didn't run well on my phone". with iOS there are no such worries about hardware (and OS) fragmentation.
It's the same advantage Apple has always had, they know what hardware everyone has in advance.
Fragmentation (Score:4, Interesting)
Phones are still sold with version 2.2 of android, 4.0 is now shipping. Faced with that, what could go wrong for developers?
Re: (Score:2)
Why I only do iOS (Score:4, Insightful)
It's real simple for me, Android is an awful platform to develop for (as are all the lowest common denominator cross platform API's). I have fun developing for iOS and really like the native API and developer tools. It's important for me to actually enjoy what I'm doing. I've definitely lost some projects because I don't offer an Android, but it's not really mattered since I have more work than I know what to do with anyway. Even after culling Android and only taking projects that really interest me, I still have to turn down projects because I'm already booked up.
Android is just not my cup of tea, if it's yours, then more power to you.
Many reasons why devs did iOS first... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know you're doing something wrong when RIM can claim (unchallenged) that the Blackberry App World is the #2 app store in terms of paid apps. #1 is, of course, Apple's App Store, but to have the #2 service be one from the #4 player is just... pathetic. (Windows Phone 7 is platform #3 after Android (#1) and iOS (#2)).
There are many reasons for this.
First, Google Checkout sucks. Yes, it does. When Android first came out, very few countries could access paid apps. As such, if you wanted to sell in the Google marketplace, you had to have free apps. The situation's better now, but you're still suffering from the fact that people found alternative ways to get paid apps for free. Google APKTor or the open-source counterpart.
Second is that it's too easy to pirate apps. Google's APKs aren't DRM'd, so what people do is they buy apps, rip them, then return them. 15 minutes is enough time for this, and if it wasn't, they can always return and try again later. Given that there are almost daily "New Paid Apps" torrents on your favorite torrent sites... After all, the iPad was dinged as "cannot run pirate apps".
Then Android users really don't want to pay for apps. I've seen some hardcore Linux users saying they'll never pay for apps - it should be FREE. Apparently, iOS users pay for 3-4 apps a month on average - Android stats are sketchier (C'mon Google - you just had 10B apps downloaded - how many of those were paid apps? Especially with the 10 cent deal?).
Third, well, the fact you have to use your phone is a major drawback. iTunes sucks, but at least you can download your app on your PC first then sync it over rather than have to leave your phone alone while it downloads hundreds of megabytes of apps. Many apps use SD cards (and full SD permissions) to get around this by having a downloader app go and download all the game assets and such.
Finally - fragmentation. Different screen sizes, different OS versions (a year after Gingerbread is released, it's on 50% of the devices. Which means roughly 100,000,000 out of the 200,000,000 Android devices run the what was latest and greatest OS. ALl the others run Froyo or prior (yikes). iOS has similar issues, but the number of people stuck at iOS 3 (only iPhone and iPhone 3G (iOS 4 doesn't run well so I'm not going to count it)) is fewer than those capable of running iOS 4/5, plus a number are upgrading. Ice Cream Sandwich will resolve this (Google's words), and maybe by tihs time next year we'll have 50% of Androids running ICS.
Then there's the black sheep - AOSP. Without access to the market, it has to use alternative marketplaces, bringing us back to piracy.
The REAL reason (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, we all know that the REAL reason devs prefer to code for iOS is because it's the only way we can convince the wife that we NEED that shiny overpriced MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.
The Wife Acceptance Factor.
Bah, humbug.. (Score:2)
I have both iOS and Android devices. The simple reason why I've purchased more apps on iOS is because the free equivalents weren't available as they are in the Android App Market. My daughter uses the iOS device (an iPod Touch) and I have a Droid2 and a Samsung Transformer. When she gets her phone it will be an Android device, likely a Samsung Nexus and she'll inherit the Transformer. So far I've spent about $100 in apps for the Android and that will likely grow because the tablets have proven to be quite u
I'm the opposite (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm the exact opposite. My game engine and various libraries (lua, box2d, etc) are all written in C++ / C, thus I have a single codebase that I build for both iOS and Android (and Windows and OSX). 99.9% of the code is shared - there are literally a few dozen lines of Javascript / Objective C that tie events at the app level into my game engine.
I greatly prefer to release for Android first, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to release for iOS version first. I can patch bugs and have a new Android build online and rolled out to my users within an hour or so. I can throw a new build straight to a user via a URL or email that they can upgrade to directly to check the fix (which is, for all intents and purposes, not an option with iOS having to deal with getting the user's device ID, generating a mobileprovision file, using one of my 100 device slots, etc, etc) With iOS my app has to go through the entire approval process again, adding at least a 1 week minimum delay before the bug fixes reach the users. It's far better allowing the Android users to give the game a thorough thrashing for several days to make sure there aren't any obscure or hard to trigger bugs, then roll out to the iOS folks.
Re:I'm the opposite (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'm going to be modded troll but, sorry, that's what your "interesting" post sounds like - you prefer to release to Android first because you can quickly and rapidly fix problems rather than taking the time to properly build and test your app before releasing it into the market.
I'm even going to go one step further in my near-trollish commentary: you're one of the reasons that Android users are less inclined to actually spend money on an app because developers likely rush them out whereas iOS developers take extra time to make sure it's "just right" before putting it out because it's such a headache to fix problems. iOS users are more confident in a reliable app while Android users are faced with buggy initial releases. I don't know, call me crazy (or a troll, as you wish), but I wouldn't rush out to spend money on an Android app if your view is indicative of the majority of Android developers....
Re: (Score:3)
You should be modded troll, or at least flamebait for that drivel.
You are clearly not a developer. You can do all the "proper building and testing" you want and will still encounter bugs unless your app is some simple fart machine.
Re:I'm the opposite (Score:5, Interesting)
Old man alert (and I'm only in my 30s):
I'm sorry, but "developers" today are fucking spoiled little children.
Back 15 years ago, before the net was completely widespread, everything shipped on DISK. Floppy, CD, whatever. You had to get get your code right, because if there were bugs, you had to send out service packs on disk too.
Complaining about having to go through Apple's "lengthy" review process is a laugh. Oh no, you wanna send out updates of your app several times a day? Maybe you need better coding standards.
Re:I'm the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like an argument for thoroughly testing your software and not releasing with bugs.
Game developers have had similar issues on other platforms. It used to be that when you released on a cartridge you actually had to do good work the first time. You can't patch a cartridge in the wild. With internet connected consoles, the problem has been getting worse and worse. It used to be that when you bought a game at launch it was solid. Now you're pretty much guaranteed to get something extremely buggy until the first few patches, assuming you actually get the whole game and the developers haven't decided to favor an early release and just update the game with more content later, leaving you with a pretty threadbare experience.
So if your complaint is that Apple makes things difficult if you don't write good code the first time, maybe the problem isn't with Apple. Heck, your description just made Apple's system sound much better to me. Why would I want to buy buggy games?
I'm guessing the following... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I was going to totally through ethics out the window for the pursuit of profit as an "App" developer, I'd easily choose the Apple monoculture. Lets face it, Apple users are used to being free with their money; these people were, in a year that wasn't prefixed by "199", paying $40-60 for a bloody unzipping program. Now, these same people have paid a bloody fortune for a locked down phone and again for a locked down tablet which are both predicated on an "it just works, so long as you make sure you always buy the new one" monoculture, and attached their credit card they use for impulse purchases to it That's PT Barnum-level temptation right there!
So long as one doesn't mind paying for dev access and isn't interested in making programs that strain social mores and/or step on Apple's toes, once you've made it past the gate the walled garden I'm sure appears glorious. You don't have to worry about multiple hardware/software platforms outside the well-documented and very limited iSphere, you are assured your userbase has someone's money to spend, and so long as you abide by The Apple Way For Developers (tm) and kowtow properly to cocoa and objective C, you'll probably watch the dollars roll in.
Re:I'm guessing the following... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best thing about being inside the walled garden is that it muffles the sound of all the sanctimonious twits whining endlessly because they attach ethical judgements to to the most tedious of consumer choices.
I agree with Google on this one (Score:5, Interesting)
We publish on both iOS and Android and I can say without a doubt its a MUCH bigger pain in the ass to publish with Apple. Their processes for vetting applications, even updates, takes several days and they certainly don't work on weekends. It also took significantly (over a month) longer to get setup with an Apple developer account and the requirements in terms of legal documents are significant, to the point that my company had to go to the office of our Secretary of State to get some documents filed that we hadn't needed in more than 20 years of existence. In short, I can't see anyone who does freemimum or truly free apps preferring Apple and its certainly NOT a friendly environment for start ups. Interestingly the Amazon market is kind of a middle ground between the almost too open Android market and Apple's too closed (IMO) approach.
one word: consistency (Score:5, Informative)
I'm developing on both Android and IPhone; started out on Android and now have extended my repetoire to IPhone.
The advantage but also disadvantage with Android is that it's very open-ended. Often you want to get a specific thing done and you end up alot of time bending the API to your will. (Oh tabview, why art though so...) Or bump into the limitations of your architecture and need to rework some things to get it running.(why does it crash on device x when I have two nested frameviews to have this design? Why doesn't it scale well on device y?)
The IPhone API takes more knowledge (how does that delegate call again and what object is stored where and how do I get a refernce to this?) but it's consistent. And the look is consistent. (which shaves up alot of time thinking about the GUI when trying to implement it.)
I'm an avid Android lover but I can appreciate the IPhone API as well.
Android Market Problems (Score:5, Interesting)
And Here's Why This Opinion Piece May be Wrong (Score:3)
It assumes linear, progressive growth in line with what we see.
But technology doesn't work that way.
Namely, free stuff has always been, and will likely continue to be, a rising tide of stuff. Stuf that... well... you can get for free.
You can't sell DOS to a market where Linux is free, or Office 95 to a market that has free office products that cover most of the basic functionality.
The point I'm making is not "payware is doomed". Far from it. But it starts like a wild west of opportunity, but over time the rising tide of free stuff drowns out a lot of the noise, and it's only those that manage to keep their head above it and progressively innovate and get better that contribute to what ultimately becomes the "settled" market.
Mobile software is still in its wild-west hayday. But when things get popular (and profitable) the probability that some developer throws his guts into a free alternative rises. Let time do its thing. Let the pay-vs-free balance settle and the PC effect to take over.
Yes, iOS will always probably make more because Apple-ecosystem users have a more solid standing culture of paying for their software.
BUT beware anyone who picks up that initial growth trend, extrapolates it linearly and builds mountains of logic on that.
Because, if we've learned anything, our beloved tech industry doesn't like'em straight lines.
Money (Score:5, Informative)
The reason is simple, I use a cross platform tool kit to create my apps. The apple versions out sell the android versions by at least 100-1 ratio. I quit even bothering to compile a android version. If I spend more than a hour testing and compiling a android version I am wasting my time. Once there is a few bucks to be made I will likely return to the android market, until then I am completely IOS / Apple Store focused.
I could care less what a android fan boy says.
1. Apple Store has better monetization.
2. IOS applications perform better (native execution)
3. The platform is standardized I am not trying to build for 300 different devices.
We're making an Android port now. (Score:3, Informative)
For a client. We built their very successful, very nice, iOS app.
It's hell making the Android port.
The iOS version of the App has these beautiful sliding table views that overlap each other with nice drop shadows. Simple gestures move them on and off the screen. As you scroll one of them, the other table view scrolls and highlights to match up to the corresponding section. When you tap products they animate and fade into an expanded information view. It's a really nice app and users love it.
Then they asked for the Android version, we're working on it. But we had to throw out the overlapping tables with drop shadows. We had to implement a stupid paging system for tables because they wouldn't scroll smoothly with ~2,000 products (each product has downloadable images that start to fetch when they are scrolled on screen). The table cells can't animate as they expand like on iOS. Putting a ScrollView inside a ScrollView doesn't "just work" like it does on iOS, where touches are correctly, and importantly, delayed slightly before being passed to inner-content views.
This app manages a lot of data and it works smoothly on iOS all the way back to an iPod Touch 2G, which has completely anemic hardware compared to the Galaxy S2. Yet the Galaxy S2 struggles with the sorts of interactions, UIs and data we ask it to render.
Another annoyance is that different Android phones seem to behave differently. On the HTC device we test with, our WebViews allow user scaling even though we disallow it in the meta-tag. Our loading indicators look different. We have to account for the user possibly using a different system font and thus can't rely on getting a pixel-perfect design to the. It truly sucks.
The final annoyance is that different Android phones have different color calibration. The colors are designed to match the company's printed books. Their printing spot colors work beautifully on iOS screens. Yet look at the Android app on a Galaxy S2 and HTC device (using the same RGB values) and the resulting colors are completely different.
I'm also trying to do things the "Android way." Yet I am rapidly discovering there is no consistent way to design apps for Android. Editable table views? Every app seems to do it differently. Google+ and Google Reader both handle them differently! How the hell do they let this happen?
Re: (Score:2)
why was writing for iOS so much easier than Android? I'm just asking out of curiosity, since I've done neither.
Is Objective-C that much easier than Java? I thought it would be the other way around.
Re:Out of interest (Score:4, Interesting)
The API. There's a ton of shit you can one-line in iOS that you'll have to write yourself in Android, or drag in 3rd party libraries.
Once you get past development, every stage after that's easier too. Testing? Easier. Putting it in the store? Easier (only one to worry about rather than several). Push messaging? Well-supported through a single vendor (Apple) rather than poorly supported through several. Want to add in-app purchasing? No problem.
For professional developers Android is, frankly, a pain in the ass. The only way it's better is if you're a hobbyist, and even then... I think I'd rather pay the $100.
Re:Rich Users (Score:5, Insightful)
You scoff at them spending $20 on a pencil at an art store, they scoff at IT people spending $300 on a "server grade" hard drive they can get for $65 at TigerDirect.
Re:Mod topic as flamebait? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Flurry analytics are free. Flurry make their money from advertisers. Android is more of a platform for ad-supported software than iPhone. So what's your theory for the bias towards iPhone in Flurry's stats? All things being equal the bias ought to be the other way.
Re:Mod topic as flamebait? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you might have just explained the results without even realizing it.
Is Flurry Analytics not a thing that competes with Google Analytics? Because I could kind of see how Google would be better able to promote Google Analytics to Android developers more easily than to iOS developers, which would take them disproportionally out of Flurry's numbers.
Re: (Score:3)
It's all about the fact that casual purchase on iOS takes ... 20 seconds? Casual purchase on Android takes ... 20 minutes? I've timed them.
What the hell have you been doing, converting the bits into morse code and sending them to google via telegraph?
A casual purchase on Android is faster than a casual purchase on iOS. It takes precisely 2 clicks to make a purchase (vs iOS's 3), and 1 click to make a refund.
I accidentally purchased an app and refunded it just now to check these numbers because I thought it would ask me confirmation one more time, but no.
Re: (Score:3)
"We only know that IDevices are usually used by total retards that can be tricked into giving all their money to *everything*."
Oh trust me. The feeling is mutual.
Re: (Score:3)
"With Android, most non-game development is done in Java. A language many people know. With iOS, development is done in Objective C, a language that is not used outside of Apple-world anywhere near as much as Java. Objective C seems obscure to me"
The more and more people who take up iPhone programming, the less and less obscure Objective C grows. This argument is beginning to wear thin, especially with numbers like this:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html [tiobe.com]
"I have some written cod