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Comment by stusmall | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that iOS is winning out as much as it is on the first native side to build.

I'm surprised that it isn't winning by a larger margin.

Why is that? My motivation for picking Android is the larger market share. Even if you have engineering preferences, to me what really matters is getting it out in front of a wider audience.

What markets are you trying to get more in front of? US? Europe? China?

What device levels are you trying to get in front of?

Android seems like a "no brainer" until you start looking at the details... For example, if you cut out all "cheap shit 2.2 android devices" and focus on new(ish) Android 4.0> things get REALLY murky... In the US iOS still holds a lead over Android in those markets; in Europe Android is ahead, but then you have localization to deal with.

Additionally, Android might have an edge in some markets, but the fact that iOS users actually PAY for apps also makes a big difference.

The point is that Android is a sensible choice but it's not an automagic choice, nor is it as cut and dry as it appears.

I should clarify my asking the question isn't "Why would anyone do that?!?!" it is more "What is the advantage? Is there something I missed?"

It really depends on your user/customer. If you have a app that targets a specific customer profile, then the larger market share is not as relevant. You need to try to identify your customer, in specific terms, and learn what kind of phones these people tend to use, among other things.

Is your app primarily for middle-aged women (mom's) living in the U.S.? Is it for teenagers and young adults in the UK? The more specific you can get with your customer profile, the better your decisions will be. The makeup of some user populations can be very different than the broader market. It would be unfortunate to invest in building an Android app, only to find that your soccer-mom customer base runs 80% iPhone (just an example).

See for instance http://time.com/23605/uniteds-in-flight-video-streaming-more...

Well, I voted twice on the same IP so maybe the results are meaningless. But considering HTML5 > native, iOS is more like 1/4th of the pie.

Objective-C is not a language option, but maybe because it's not a backend language? If iOS/Objective-C people voted for C++, they only have 3% now. So ~25% people want a fantasy iOS app but only 3% know native iOS = Objective-C?

16% of people think Javascript is a backend language? Hope those are votes for Node.js?

I actually prefer Android as a user. But if I'm building native (instead of HTML5), it's because I want a polished UI, and that is easier to deliver on iOS where there are only a handful of devices to test against (in particular screen resolutions). Assuming the app goes well on iOS then I'd happily take on the extra effort of an Android version.

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