[Cialug] iPhone vs Android

[David Champion]

What Josh said. I've heard mobile devs prefer to target iOS first since you
can target just the current generation of devices.

Android device vendors and cell phone providers are notoriously bad about
updates. In many cases you have to root your phone / tablet and install a
3rd party version like cyanogenmod if you want a more current version of
Android.

-dc

On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Josh More <jmore at starmind.org> wrote:

> App developers come in two flavours - those that want to solve real
> problems and those that use the easy tools to collect a paycheck. The
> latter have been targeted by Apple with a campaign focused on
> promoting graphic artists into "developers".
>
> So, in the former case, you have people who are highly skilled and
> expensive, creating apps that don't look very good and often fail
> based on the wide range of devices out there. In the latter, you get
> cheap apps that look great and work reliably (usually) on a class of
> device.
>
> At the business level, an Android solution requires investing a lot of
> cash up front to pay for the good devs AND investing in a support
> infrastructure since there's no way to test an app on all available
> devices so you have to deal with the constant "my four year old device
> won't run your app!" complaints. If you go with IOS, you pay once and
> get a piece of crap that works OK on most devices and your support
> staff is a single person whose job is saying "we don't support the
> iPhone4, you have to upgrade".
>
> All told, it's a good business decision, even if we don't like it.
>
> -Josh
>
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 2:49 PM, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It has long boggled my mind why it seems so common for some organization
> to
> > produce a phone app for iPhone but not Android. Close to home, the
> biggest
> > offender is the Des Moines Register. They made an app for iOS for
> RAGBRAI,
> > but not for Android, and the same for a new "things to do in Des Moines"
> > app. They promised an Android version Real Soon Now, but we're still
> > waiting.
> >
> > What is so hard about making an app for Android? You'd think the least
> they
> > could do is write the thing in HTML5 and show a mobile website on both
> > platforms.
> >
> > Android phones clearly outnumber iPhones in the U.S. and worldwide, and
> > it's not like Des Moines Register's audience (or the audience of any of
> the
> > other apps I've seen do this) are iPhone heavy. Why would a company limit
> > themselves by deliberately rolling out to a smaller audience and then
> > waiting years to go to Android? (Or never going, for some of them.)
> >
> > I thought it might be that iPhone is where the money is. But there's info
> > on that here:
> >
> >
> https://medium.com/its-an-app-world/march-2015-iphone-vs-android-monetization-capabilities-you-won-t-believe-who-won-7a02fde2dc2
> >
> > # of phones worldwide:
> > iPhone: 600,000,000
> > Android: 1,700,000,000
> >
> > Yearly Downloads:
> > iPhone: 22,000,000,000
> > Android: 51,000,000,000
> >
> > In App Purchase Revenue:
> > iPhone: $10,000,000,000
> > Android: $6,000,000,000
> >
> > In App Ad Impressions:
> > iPhone: 580,000,000,000
> > Android: 1,210,000,000,000
> >
> > Ad Revenue:
> > iPhone: $3,300,000,000
> > Android: $4,500,000,000
> >
> > That doesn't look like a clear case for iPhone being the money maker,
> > especially in the case of the Register, being driven by ads.
> >
> > Anyone have any insight? What's so special about iPhone that so many
> people
> > choose to distribute there, and not on Android?
> >
> > --
> > Todd
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