Ask HN: Android development, revenue and compatibility

9 points·chrisb··5 comments

I'm considering writing an app for Android. However, having read a number of blogs/articles it appears to be difficult to make much money from Android, although I haven't been able to find any hard revenue figures from anyone.

So, if you've done any Android development, have you made any money?

And how much of an issue is compatibility between different platforms?

Thanks

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Compatibility isn't much of an issue unless you are doing something low level with the NDK, or are using an API that has changed significantly between versions (most are fairly stable). Otherwise just follow the recommendations from the Android team for different screen sizes, etc.

I haven't released my app yet and it's going to be free initially anyway, so I don't have any direct observations on revenue.

Thanks for the information - glad to hear you haven't found compatibility too much of a problem. I don't plan to do any low-level stuff that might cause a problem.

Is anyone actually doing any Android development?

We're working on a sizable Android app over at http://vodpod.com. We're hoping to test it it in the next few weeks.

My impression, after two months, is that the architecture is solid. A good deal of thought has been given to privacy, information sharing, and interoperability. It's a very open platform, and I think that's a big strength. On the other hand, it's Java, and there is a lot of infrastructure required to accomplish simple tasks, such as moving to a new part of the app or displaying a notification. Perhaps that's my Ruby bias, though. :)

Thanks for the response. It's good to hear your opinion is overall positive when building a large app.

Java isn't my favourite language/environment either, but I suppose it gets the job done.

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