Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcantelon | Hacker News Reader

It's not that hard to unsterstand. iPhone had a lead on the Android and a lot of people invested heavily in iPhone. Now that Android has caught up in terms of marketshare it will take awhile for these people to catch up on their Android investment. As Android outpaces iPhone in the market, the app situation may end up reversed.

View on HN

Also, remember he ignores apps which are available on both systems.

Since iOS was big before Android was, it stands to reason that many apps would have been developed for iOS and then not ported to Android. Whereas now Android is a huge market that most will want to develop for, but they're not going to stop developing for iOS - so I would expect a vast majority of apps to be on both platforms.

Since there was never a time when Android had a large market but iOS didn', it not surprising that the only Android-exclusive Apps are ones that can't be done on iOS.

"Also, remember he ignores apps which are available on both systems."

That seems reasonable, since the idea of a "killer app" could be defined as one whose existence leads you to pick the platform it's on over any other.

If an app is available on both Android and iPhone, then it's not decisive. You can still choose either platform.

The integration offered by some of the apps on android trumps those that exist on the iphone in my mind. Facebook, Twitter, and a 3rd party linkedin software i use integrate with my address book seamlessly, personally i find it a neat feature that my address book is populated with my friends social profile pictures, current status etc..

Did you see this part at the end, and if so, does that affect your judgement?

> A final thought, regarding Android’s relative weakness as a software platform. iOS’s exclusivity for a bunch of big-name mobile games — Need for Speed Undercover, Star Wars: Battle for Hoth, Monopoly, Tetris, The Sims, Assassin’s Creed — has been broken. Not by Android, where none of these games exist, but by Windows Phone 7, a one-month-old platform.

Microsoft has a lot of weight in the game market. Not surprising that they convinced some people to get onboard. I doubt very much that, as Gruber seems to be implying, there is something intrinsically flawed about the Android platform that is a barrier to game development.

EDIT: Unity will likely make a big difference to the Android appsphere: http://unity3d.com/unity/coming-soon/android

They "convinced" developers to get on board in large part because they let devs use the same tools they've been using to create the original games on Windows with. If I had an existing PC game it's a no brainer to target WP7. Android is a much tougher sell.

They also paid for a lot of these ports. Many iPhone devs have mentioned Microsoft approaching them with money and help to get them to port to phone7.

Windows paid for all these companies to create the games. They funded the development - that's the only reason why.

So, why doesn't Google fund those same players? There must be a value judgement there because I gotta assume Google thought of that as an option.

Why incentive do they have to do this? Android has surpassed the iPhone in numbers--it's just a matter of time before developers switch to building Android first, then iOS.

Has it passed in terms of sales per unit time, or total sales to date? I think it's the former, whereas the latter matters more to someone selling apps.

Symbian has more units than iPhone but the iPhone has more apps.

Number does not equal app sales.

Microsoft had to do this since they are that far behind in the game. They probably blew billions to do this and not to mention, this is not a sustainable strategy. Google, on the other hand, should probably improve their NDK, which a number of changes are coming, to attract developers that way.

@Tichy has asked in the below comments,

> where are the killer games for OS X?

Yes, I think it's entirely understandable that developer adoption lags marketshare without reading giant implications about the platforms into it. Apple undeniably is brilliant at marketing their products and got developers wildly enthusiastic about them - normal laws of "physics" just don't apply to Apple in this space. For Android reality applies and this looks pretty much like a normal developer adoption curve for a platform to me.

The lead is important, but the real stat is "how many users buy apps?". Symbian has more users than both, but how many of those phones have 3rd party apps on them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com