[Cialug] iPhone vs Android

[Matthew Nuzum]

Theron, I think your point is right, but how you got there is not right.
iOS is, sadly, a very big moving target and I've never met a company that
uses planned obsolescence as brutally as Apple does.

Josh, I also disagree with your statements: iOS is far more difficult to
develop for than Android, though with the very recent versions of Xcode,
it's getting close.

I think the C-level execs having iDevices is more likely to blame. My next
best guess is that we have a severe shortage of Java developers around the
area, so it could simply be a problem with the cost being too high.


On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 9:44 AM, Theron Conrey <theron at conrey.org> wrote:

> I'll call BS. Most app devs I know want to solve real problems AND make
> coin.  Those people know that iOS is less of a moving target.  It moves,
> just less than android.  It's treated as a stable base to make larger
> revenue with a single build vs. android with multiple platforms.  There are
> devs that just want to make coin with crap. The above also explains why
> they write against iOS primarily as well.
>
> -theron
>
> > On 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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-- 
Matthew Nuzum
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