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Ask HN: Developing mobile applications : Android vs iOS

3 points by brserc ↗ HN
It's been a while since I've seen a discussion about whether to develop for android or ios as a developer. Android now has most of the mobile phone market(%80), but most of the developers believe that making money from ios market is easier.

Can you share your experiences? Especially some statistics about some apps that are on both platforms would be very useful for everyone. Experiences of those who develops for other mobile markets would also be very helpful.

7 comments

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tartle
From what my clients say (I develop cross-platform apps as freelancer, mostly in Titanium), sales still remain much higher on iOS.
jamesjguthrie
Learn how to do both, natively.
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tartle
...and when you have learnt it - use a decent cross-platform framework (like Titanium or Xamarin, I don't mean uncanny-valley-html-pretending-native-ui...) for 80% cases, where it makes more sense than producing two separate code bases.
pearjuice
Due to the ease of iTunes, Apple users have it way easier in having directly usable credit for the App Store. Besides, they already paid premium for their devices so it is likely they have additional money which they will spend on third-party applications for the iOS platform. Android still has this "It is cheap and free" imago so they are not heavy spenders and will not grab their wallet fast.

I don't have any data at hand to directly back this up, but my guess is it will be roughly like this. It would be valuable to have a report on how the high-end pricey smartphone owners (HTC One, Galaxy S4 etc) are spending more or less than the budget Android devices.

kumarm
Android Hands down. Yes Per User you make more money on iOS. But that market is way over matured and slim chance for any new entrant to make it.

Also there was a question in Silicon Valley iOS Developers Meetup mailing list to find Bootstrap developers who live on revenue from their apps (without any contracting work on the side). The only developers who seem to make money purely developing their apps are Android Developers. (Not a single iOS developer from silicon valley developer group with 6K+ members said they make a living purely on iOS app development).

PS: This was from September 2012. I don't know how to link the emails from meetup.

coralreef
Heh, surveys are only worth so much. Aggregate data is usually more useful.

FWIW make 100% of my income from iOS (<$100k range).