Why Android is a Better Platform for Startups than iOS
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EDIT: Hi downvoter[s]. Is it taboo for me to bring up the aforementioned revenue discrepancy? As far as I know it’s real, and should be a consideration for anyone who’s trying to follow the money. I’d appreciate insights and discussion instead of anonymous downvoting.
10 years later we keep getting told not to write software for the huge Android market because iPhone owners buy apps unlike those cheap Android users.
But I have no idea if this same dynamic applied to the PC/Mac days.
There are software sales situations when that makes sense, bespoke enterprise software etc. but not phone apos as far as I can tell.
The marketplace was also vastly different - when Apple was at its peak the market was physical, boxed copies had to be shipped to stores or via mail order. Now the respective stores give access to the entire market with one upload.
The other major differentiator is the number of users likely to download an app in the first place. Stats are very hard to get, but the general feel is iPhone users are much more likely to install apps, with a lot of Android users just buying the cheapest phone.
There's a lot of money in both markets though, so picking one is really a matter of where your company can ship first.
Any idea on how many of those are low end devices sold to users who just want a phone and have no interest in the play store?
I just get the feeling that looking at averages of the entire platform in this instance can be misleading as there are different types of users.
App Annie shows that of all revenue from paid app downloads, Apple accounts for 70% of it, which is up from 60% in 2014.
>> In fact, I think Spolsky is wrong about nearly everything in his article.
>> Let’s divide computer users into two groups — people who think computers are fun, and people who just happen to use a computer. Which group do you think buys more software (even including all the Linux nerds in the first group)? Which group do you think most Mac users are in?
>> Don’t get me wrong, the Windows software market is much larger than the Mac market, and there are millions more Windows nerds than Mac nerds — if you’re trying to sell into big corporations, write for Windows. I’m not even arguing anything silly, like that Mac users, on average, are smarter than their Windows counterparts. (Although I will link to this.) All I’m saying is this: amongst computer users who actually buy software, Mac users comprise a signficantly larger chunk than 4 percent. Significantly.
>> Mac users value attention to detail and intuitive, consistent, attractive interfaces. Developers who share these values would do well to create software for the Mac, where they are likely to be rewarded handsomely for their efforts. Developers who would prefer to program more features with less attention to detail should not.
(There are some non-hacker persons who buy Android on software freedom principles, but it's a very small crowd.)
This is somewhat self-fulfilling. There are very few developers of paid apps that put equal time and effort into developing both on iOS and Android and release paid apps on both platforms (instead of freemium on one)[0].
Of those that do, many simply make one or the other (usually the Android one) either a simple web view shim, or a naive port of the app design from the opposite platform, which usually looks as bad as you'd expect it would.
So in the end, it's not surprising that some companies report dramatically better sales on iOS than on Android. It's not very straightforward to compare them, because they're essentially shipping two different products, one on each platform.
[0] I'm only talking about paid apps for which app revenue (including in-app purchases) is the primary business model. In other words, Facebook and Twitter would not count here, since they make their money off of advertising.
Quite the opposite. If it's true that Android users' reputation for being less willing to pay is undeserved (or overstated), then that means that the market is probably undersaturated. That means it would be to their advantage to target Android users.
In general, business stand to make more money where they can identify the markets that are being overlooked by others, not by competing in the same markets that others are already targeting.
identify the markets that are being overlooked by others
This is probably just their first android project and they had this realization and are eager to share it.
Sounds like something I want no part in.
An iPhone here costs A LOT, and I mean A LOT of money. The iPhone 6 costs US$ 1129 and the iPhone 6 Plus costs US$ 1258.
Our minimum wage, in comparison, is US$ 254/Month. The average montly income on the country last year was around US$ 376.
Just those figures already show how is nearly impossible for most of us to have iPhones. Add to that our crime rate, and most of us that can afford one, won't dare to do it in risk of losing it.
It's sad that we see a lot of nice apps, some good ideas and we can't even test it. I believe it's the same for several countries around the world.
That said, if you really want your app to reach a global audience, support for Android is a no brainer. I find the "Android users buy less" excuse not really acceptable, because the marrket is much bigger.
And I don't see that scenario changing in Apple's direction, because Windows Phone is growing a lot on developing countries, and it's the second operating system is almost every south american country. In Colombia, Windows Phone already have 25% of the market share. In Brazil, 6%, while iOS have 4,7%.
I love that the android store does not make you wait.
Having said that, I hate Android Studio, and Eclipse, and I hate the android simulator too.
It makes the development process slower, feels clunky.
To each their own, of course.
The last time I tried to write any kind of app was 2 years ago, and at the time people were telling me that better mobile web apps and cross-platform tools like Phonegap were the future. Has this changed or is it still around the corner?
However if you're really aiming for the smoothest UX, there's still just a bit too much delay and kludginess with HTML5 controls in the browser/webview, and nothing will beat native application controls. I think that difference is pretty small now, for the vast majority of apps and what they need to do, but it definitely still exists.
Recent cross-platform frameworks like React native certainly seem to buy into the 'native is king' mindset by focusing on allowing you to write as much cross-platform shared code as possible, in a single language/framework, but accepting that you must, with some abstractions, write the final UI layer with the target device/platform in mind. I.e. more learn once, write for every platform, run on every platform than learn once, write once, run everywhere, which seems just as much a pipe dream on mobile devices as it ever was!
Note that only the initial major version will be reviewed on TestFlight but once that gets approved shortly, minor builds can be pushed without the reviews 6 times a day. It worked really well for us. Once we're happy with the build, it's one smooth process to push it to the app store.
A lot of the reason the web took off was exactly this kind of serendipity; a dev found an idea to be mildly interesting, posted a rudimentary v1, it's not useful for what the dev thinks it will be, but users (usually not the users the dev anticipated) find it useful for something else.
For public apps, Apple offers expedited review for public bug fixes, and in my experience these are very fast, within 24 hours.
200 builds / 60 minutes = 1 build every 18 seconds.
It's kinda like those make your own pasta places, you eventually realize that a chef is pretty good at figuring out what ingredients go together, sourcing high quality ingredients, etc. If you have a basic knowledge of food you can make pretty darn good pasta at a make your own pasta shop but will get blown out of the water by an italian grandmother.
You don't want to open your new pasta shop in an area with lots of grandmothers, if you aren't yet at the top of your game.
> but even those feel very broken, it's something about how the app scrolls and i think in combination with the screen feels on your fingers, it's like a steampunk phone, you know there's gears inside that might need oiling more regularly.
And more trolling