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Comment by darkstar999 | Hacker News Reader

How can anyone justify building an iOS-only app when it's only 11% of the market, while Android is 84%?

Because it's the 11% that matters. I mean this honestly, I'm not being dismissive. I could point you at plenty of data to back this up, but the simple fact that almost everyone's app goes iOS first should be sufficient to indicate that it's the platform that matters most.

Side note: I've got both iOS and Android devices, and nearly every app on Android feels like a cheap knockoff of the iOS equivalent. I can't think of a single situation where I prefer the Android app over the iOS app.

The relevant data you're probably thinking about is average monthly spend, and popularity in the USA.

For a free app with an international audience like Facebook, this seems like the wrong strategy

Ultimately, because it's easier.

I was speaking to a friend recently about writing iOS & Android apps and their Android apps literally take 4x longer than their iOS apps to build because of hardware fragmentation. As in, bugs in the hardware of phones like the SGS3 (still a very large portion of the market) causing them to have to implement massive workarounds and complete full testing on actual hardware devices.

Because those numbers grossly misrepresent reality. In north american usage stats its often more like 80-20 iOS. Android devices are out there, but they're largely still just being used as phones. iOS users are much more likely to actually use their phones for things like hanging out on random facebook social experiments.

I love how this comment appears every time there's an app announcement here. Face it, if you want the earliest access to new mobile apps, Android is the wrong platform.

"face it" as if my comment implied that Android users are entitled to it? That's just the attitude I would expect from an Apple fanboy.

11% of the global market. Remember that.

It is around 40%-50% of the developed world. Japan is the #1 iPhone nation at around 55% share, the US alone I remember reading its around 52% of smartphones are iPhones. Also 50% of iPhones out there use the latest OS (a month from release) and that will only accelerate while only 25% of Androids use the latest OS.

Edit: Also Apple is betting on turning China into an iPhone nation. There were around 20 million pre-orders for the iPhone 6 in China. The iPhone marketshare might shrink as more people get smartphones, but the iPhone isn't going anywhere soon, it seems its going to be the phone of the middle class around the world.

iOS users have more income and time to waste probably.

You can't run a decent app on half of those $100 Android 'smartphones'.

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