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Comment by dregin | Hacker News Reader

So, you stopped releasing a version for android because the software you're using can't deal with the formatting properly (even though it says it can) and the material you're using is locked to one provider... The majority of the blame definitely lies somewhere other than on android's doorstep.

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They did put the effort in to overcome those issues, only to discover that for every 80 iOS users they had 1 Android user, so they concluded that continuing to do the work wasn't justified because there was a lack of demand. If they'd had comparable demand from Android users, they'd have continued to invest.

But if they had a crappy product for Android is it any wonder that their uptake ratio was so out of kilter? If they had platform feature parity at launch your argument would be valid but they didn't so you cannot draw the conclusion you have drawn.

It's not really my conclusion - it's the conclusion from the TWN piece. That said, even though it's not a controlled experiment, the fact that they didn't have feature parity doesn't completely invalidate their experience. 80-1 is a high ratio particularly for a free product that people presumably would have expected to improve over time if they had been interested.

See Zaheer's comment on this thread too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4991585

Android is Open Source, so it belongs to everyone. Content producers need to do their part alongside developers to make it great, even if that means putting in more investment than supporting a propriety platform like iOS.

> Content producers need to do their part alongside developers to make it great

Uh...why? Why should they "do their part" for a platform where they have no users and don't see a likely growth of them?

I am an Android user and developer, but I am also realistic.

Because that investment will pay off over time as more and more people move to Android, and a platform that isn't controlled by a single company will make innovation easier for everyone.

Most businesses aren't run as charities. If I can make 80 times the money from iOS as from Android I don't care if it's open or closed. Hot dog vendors are not looking to build your utopia. If there's a free place they can sell hotdogs but only bring in $10 a day and there's a highly regulated place where they can bring in $800 a day they are going to take the one where they make more money.

Android already has the bulk of the market share, if they are losing 80 to 1 there's something fundamentally broken in the ecosystem. Stop blaming the hot dog vendors.

There's some legwork to do to make the claims you're making. Maybe you should step back and establish niceties like why people who are in their target demos will flock to Android "over time" and quantify how the NPV of investing now will pay off later.

It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS. A hardware advantage that Apple had is almost gone now, so the only thing missing is content. I don't think iOS buyers are fanatics or taken in by marketing because there is more marketing of Android. I think they have been choosing a better product.

So, now that hardware and the OS no-longer favor iOS, it's simply down to content providers to make the investment. Technologists bought in to Android because it's open, long before it became the best platform. Why shouldn't content producers do the same?

"It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS. "

This is not well known, although it's an opinion often voiced here.

"Why shouldn't content producers do the same?"

Because they are not utopian technologists? This article is about a content producer that invested in Android yet failed. Instead of talking about how the content producers need to do more, we should be talking about why this effort failed.

Here's a start: when you buy an iphone today the Newsstand is one of a handful of Apps you start with. It's featured and people click on it and then many of them start buying and consuming content. What is the competing experience on Android? I assume there's no equivalent to the standalone Newsstand App installed by default on the phone. I assume they hit Play, which incidentally is terribly named and many customers never click on ever because they think it only leads to pokemon. Then they have to know that Magazines on their Device are a thing now and find them on which may be easy or hard in Play but is still an order of magnitude harder than it is on iOS.

> It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS.

I wouldn't say it's "well known" at all and I certainly wouldn't say it in such definite terms--and I am an Android user.

> Why shouldn't content producers do the same?

Because they have not yet decided that their projected returns from devoting significant resources to Android outweighs the opportunity costs? They have no ties to Android unless they will realize benefits from targeting it. The purchase patterns of current Android customers doesn't make me as a user and a fan of the platform think they're going to make back their money on investment, so I certainly don't think that they're unreasonable to want to actually see some assurances of a decent return before investing in the platform.

Sorry, Android is controlled by a single company.

I doubt that would change things.

iOS users are not price sensitive and Apple doesn't make any pretense that content is free. People who buy into the Apple world are choosing to buy into an ecosystem where they are going to have to buy content from a collection of proprietary 'Stores'. Apple is well known for the iTunes store and the App store so it's a conscious choice for their users.

Most Android devices (obviously not the highest end ones) are sold on price, and Google as a brand is known for providing free, advertising supported content. It's no great surprise that people who choose that ecosystem expect to get free stuff and don't want to be buying a lot of digital content.

If they'd wanted that they'd have bought an iOS device.

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