Free apps do well on Android. Paid apps (Outright & Free + In App Purchases) generate more revenue on iOS. Being able to show traction is important for startups but, being able to show increased revenue is equally if not more important.
Until Android on a whole proves to be more lucrative to monetize apps, many developers will continue building iOS first (imho).
Your statement is true, but sort of missing the point of the article. Sure, "many" developers "will" wait "until" Android "proves" better. But some won't, and there is value in being part of the early ones to jump. The article is advocating jumping now and gives some arguments (not all of them convincing IMHO) as to why that's a good idea.
You're just saying that not everyone will take the advice. Well, yeah. :)
Being in the process of registering my LLC for an iOS Apple Developer account, I couldn't agree more. It's been over two months now of back-and-forth with Apple and Dun & Bradstreet, and the end is still not in sight. All I'd like them to do is take my $100 and give me the ability to test the free app I'm making on a device and then publish it, but apparently Apple feels a longer-than-two-month turnaround time is acceptable. (And yes, I know I could just register a personal account and then slowly convert it to an LLC account. I shouldn't have to do that. As someone who's somewhat interested in their platform but not dying to develop for it, I'm not going to do that.)
It's not really a solution--it's a hack to get around their horrible process. I want to correctly publish what belongs to and was created by the LLC under the name of the LLC, not my own name.
I started off with a sole proprietor account, and then converted it to an LLC. It was "pending" for months. During that time, my Apple developer registration expired, and I renewed it... but because I renewed it for the LLC, not the sole proprietorship, and the LLC was "pending", my account expired anyway, and my app was removed from the store. Thanks, Apple.
Registering my LLC for an iOS Dev account with D&B was a breeze. I filled out a form, waited a few days and picked up the phone. I registered right when Apple started requiring DUNS and this was posted to HN http://blog.metamorphium.com/2012/12/03/apple-duns.
I actually read your write-up before starting the process--thanks for putting it together!
Yes, I used Apple's D-U-N-S lookup form. Here's a quick summary of what's happened so far:
The first time I submitted the request for a D-U-N-S number through Apple's form, I did not receive a call. After ten days, I called D&B to see what was going on, and they said they didn't have a record of the request. So somewhere between Apple and D-U-N-S, the request was lost.
I submitted the request again, and I got a call from D&B five days later. They sent the D-U-N-S number after the call, but their email indicated it wouldn't be usable for 14 days! I tried it on the Developer Center registration form anyway, but, like they said, it didn't work, so I waited.
At the end of the two weeks, the Developer Center was down for new enrollment--for another two weeks. Once it was functioning again, I submitted the enrollment request with the D-U-N-S number.
Twenty days later, I received an email from Apple telling me that my LLC's legal status wasn't listed on D&B's profile, so I'd need to work it out with them. Oh, and I'd need to restart the enrollment process.
After contacting D&B, I received conflicting emails from them, one telling me that "my request was complete" and one sent at exactly the same time telling me that the changes would be made within the next week and a half. I sent Apple an email detailing this and asking for the enrollment to be continued where it left off rather than going to the back of the queue--which was twenty days the last time--so we'll see if that goes anywhere. I've read some accounts of having a months-long ordeal ahead even from this point in the process.
I realize things are probably a bit worse at the moment because of the Developer Center problems, but that doesn't change the fact that this process is extremely off-putting and it sours me a bit to development on their platform.
The US Federal government also requires a DUNS for any contractual interaction with a business or non-profit. They have a streamlined process set up here (it is also free): http://fedgov.dnb.com/webform
If you think you may ever apply for a government grant or contract then you will need a DUNS. I applied through this page for a Canadian non-profit and got the number in less than a week (though I had to go through a web chat on a different D&B page to actually find a D&B employee who would give me the number since they never emailed it to me).
It's still a shitshow, and Apple should either work with D&B to develop a more streamlined process like what they have with the Government, or find a better provider.
Are you saying that you opened a bank account in Netherlands or that you have business entity there? (I am genuinly interested in this)
Netherlands is among the supported countries [1], so the latter should work. But it makes no sense - what, I have to open a Ltd in another country just because Google doesn't support mine?
Apart from that, Apple users are used to paying and thus pay more.
I have my own company and wanted to do the same. Sadly for Swedish companies you have to be a "Aktiebolaget", you need to be on the stockmarket, to be able to have your company name in the App store.
My options waere to either invest about $8000 to become a AB or open a LLC in UK while living in Sweden. After half a year of trying and failing I just gave up and stopped developing for iOS.
Starting an AB does not mean that you're "on the stock market", it's just an LLC, you'll own all the shares yourself privately. You could also start an "Enskild firma" which doesn't cost much and requires no 50K SEK bound capital.
Just to offer a counter-anecdote, I created a federal corporation in Canada, did the process to get a DUNS number using the free option (which everyone warns against, but I was in no big rush), and had the number the next day, and then the fully validated Apple developer corporate account. Was the most painless, brilliant process I could imagine.
Why don't you want to register a personal account and convert later? It seems odd to complain about this when it's very straightforward to do, and you can be up and running almost immediately. I haven't even bothered with a business account, even though I've incorporated and have been selling my app for > 1 year.
> But if you build an app on Android that’s on par with the design quality you’re used to on iOS, your users will love you. The press will love you. Gizmodo will feature your app just so they’ll have a nice header image for their “Android Apps of the Week” post.
That's nice, but will it translate into sales? Probably not, given the horror stories of Android piracy that seem to come out every few weeks (particularly in the gaming market).
Of course, many startups profit in hype instead of dollars, so maybe that's irrelevant.
Android Apss are easier to deploy, but becuase of that, you get bad code - or WORSE - viruses! There are several Andoid apps that are Malware - there is not one in Apple App store.
Trick is to find a balance in the process so that author of an App is legally identifiable. This is to avoid episodes like "Fake Angry Bird App" and "Fake Mobile Banking App".
IMO, when I download ETrade App on my smartphone, it is good to know that someone checked that it was submitted by someone who is from ETrade really. If the process is rigorous for E*Trade, so be it. But as an end user I'd prefer it to be that way instead of making it _my_ responsible to verify before installing the app.
There's a big difference between a platform with several hundred thousand known pieces of malware in the wild vs a platform with a tiny handful of what are mostly proof-of-concept apps.
Open vs closed & other religious wars aside, it's ridiculous to imply that both platforms carry the same risk to end users.
I didn't say that nor imply it. What I said was that both platforms do have documented cases of malware. The post I replied to made the obviously false claim that the iOS store has never had malware.
I'd like to point out that "in the wild" on android literally means "they're not in the play store", but rather downloaded from somewhere else.
The play store scans every submitted the apps for malware (in the last versions it also scans applications NOT installed through the play store).
I don't want to be pedantic, it's just that I know more about this platform and I would like to be corrected if I say something wrong about platforms that I'm not familiar with.
Wow! Bad karma for dissing Android!
For the record - my family has every platform, including Andorid phone, kindle, and set top boxes. I personally had 2 malwares installed on my Galaxy that bricked it. Also there are way too many apps on Android that ask for information access they should not have - like my GPS location or contacts info for a game. Andoid needs a little higher bar to remove this crapware.
I know of at least two security researchers that got malware into Apple's App Store.
Given the review process, the odds may be longer that a particular app is malware, but given the size of the store I think it is virtually certain there is still some undetected malware in it.
In the real world, those "horror stories" don't make it out of HN and tech blogs. Android is now the biggest platform out there, time to get back to earth. I've been on Android for a year now and know many noobs who are too, never had a virus, most people don't install much apps anyway and they usually only install the most famous ones when they do.
But the point of the article is that android is a better place for startups to develop apps (than iOS, specifically). The existence of 'noobs' who 'don't install much apps anyway' doesn't sound like it makes Android an attractive place for startups.
Android piracy isn't a horror story for users (unless they download a pirated app that's been injected with an address-book upload trojan, which is not unheard of). It IS a horror story for a startup trying to make money on Android, which is why it gets deserved traction in tech blogs and HN. And which is why the original article is flawed in the way the OP indicated.
I didn't make myself clear, most people on both platforms are noobs that don't install much apps (iphone and android) or only the most famous ones. Most noobs I know used to be iphone users too. Remember, in the real world, most people are noobs. As for apps stealing your address book, that happened on iOS too and no one cares but HNers and some tech blogs. Get over it.
Of course, the other stat is that almost all that piracy comes from China, which doesn't have the Play Store so people there can't buy your apps anyway.
Users in China don't have access to the Play Store and aren't even counted among the activations that Google reports. The reason that there is more piracy in China is because of no access to the Play Store.
But the only barrier is the $99 fee for the dev account. Register as an individual and it's "instant access." And that's why the App Store is saturated.
They set up the barriers the moment you want to register a company. Presumably so that you can't pretend to be representing someone else's company.
As a primarily-iOS user / developer who also has an Android tablet (last year's Nexus 7), completely agree with both points made here. [The first being that Android development is better, and the second being that the vast majority Android apps currently suck compared to the iOS equivalent, making for a nice opportunity.]
It's hard enough to peg a real user need and deliver on that need in a satisfying, sticky way. It's at the core of what a startup needs to do to cultivate that product development discipline as a team, and tools that make that harder are insult to injury.
As others have mentioned, though, none of these app startups are launching just for a smooth development experience. And Android just hasn't shown that users will reliably upgrade their OS, much less pay for apps like iOS users do. Until that changes, even if the better dev experience will accelerate a shift, it's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem on app quality.
You are assuming that there is demand for anything but free apps. I know that I personally would kill to pay for top-quality Android apps like I do on iOS, but I don't think I speak for the majority of Android users. Based on everything that I've seen, they just don't want to pay.
Industry numbers I've seen suggest that this is changing rapidly. I think what we're seeing is that Android is attracting a lot more high end smartphone customers and they are buying more apps. The gap is still big, but it is shrinking rapidly.
Completely agreed (and would also kill to pay); what I meant at the end of my comment that it's that it's a nice opportunity predicated on being a quality app right when the market starts to shift.
I just spent $20 on MailDroid to have a good IMAP/Exchange client (to replace Gmail + stock Email).
I spent $20 on this over the free options (like K9 email) or the free ad-supported MailDroid version, because it is a high quality app and it looks very, very nice. Especially on my new Nexus 7's full HD screen.
That said, I'm pretty sure I'm not part of the majority here. Just raising a hand saying that some people will pay serious money for good stuff. And they're not all on iOS.
Yes.. developers might prefer android over iOS.. but end of the day iOS apps get you business..IMO...tell me which android apps sell better than their counterpart iOS apps?
Is niche-filling in the shadow of a large corporation (Google) really a sustainable way to run a business?
Software-savvy giants like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon pretty much don't care about stomping on your little niche (esp. if it's due to a deficiency in the platform/system) if it helps them one-up their competitor.
This is such a weird piece. It seems to get why, despite the onerous restrictions Apple puts on devs, iOS has great apps and huge numbers in every direction, but then just says Android is better. Perhaps a better argument would be to understand why the gain is worth the pain, and then move to saying that the gain without the pain would be even sweeter.
I dunno, I make web stuff. I just like watching you guys duke it out.
What I took from the piece is that Android is far more developer friendly in terms of ease of development, deployment to devices for testing, and releasing.
Whether that is enough to make it a 'better' platform depends on what your needs are.
If I were doing a mobile startup and needed fast feedback on devices, Android's fast turnaround sure would be interesting. Not the deciding factor, but definitely a check in the Android column.
I know that Android users are starved for slick apps that look good and work well, because I'm one of them (when using my Nexus 7). But as a developer I know that I can't make money from them.
There is no way forward for (paid) Android apps that can make a living. You need to sell on iOS in order to make any sort of revenue.
So if your startup is built on a free app, then by all means use Android to test your idea. But if you want to make things and sell them for money, then putting up with the App Store model is more than worth the amount of money you can make compared to Android.
> I know that Android users are starved for slick apps that look good and work well, because I'm one of them (when using my Nexus 7). But as a developer I know that I can't make money from them.
> There is no way forward for (paid) Android apps that can make a living.
Why do you say this? I concede it may be true for games, but games are actually one of the hardest places to make a living. Make not-game apps and your expectation of payment and your likelihood of piracy plummet.
Maybe it is just for games, but that's the segment I pay the most attention to. I'd love to be proven wrong through experience, so maybe I'll throw some Android apps out there.
Personally, I know 3 people who make a living doing productivity and utility apps on Android now.
I've actually never personally met an indy iOS developer making their money on not-games, come to think of it.
I easily spend $15-30/mo on android apps. I go out of my way to buy ad-less versions but I do appreciate that I can try an app for a few days even with an ugly, unfit ad.
>> There is no way forward for (paid) Android apps that can make a living. You need to sell on iOS in order to make any sort of revenue.
Yes, that is kind of sad. As someone who does pay for Android software, I imagine I'm in the minority. I've got extended family members who balk at the notion of paying even a dollar for software on Android.
OTOH, I'm curious how many paid apps on the iOS App store actually hit the break-even point.
That's actually fantastic, because it means 40% of developers are breaking even while only probably 10% of them are making anything decent (just based on the 90% of everything is crud rule, which seems to hold quite true for mobile apps).
Because that's the only way most people will ever hear about your app, but if you can get in front of them through press or optimizing your text and images plenty of people will pay.
Now ... we tried to register apple dev account in late 2010 for my company. The first thing they required was a lot of documents. We send them. Then came the payment ... they refused to accept our credit card and refused non credit card payment methods. The email we got back from apple was a exercise in absurdity - (this was 2012 already after a lot of back and forth) - they wanted the details of the company credit card send to them BY FAX. In 2012 they wanted for us to send the full details of a credit card written on paper. By fax. So we told them to fuck off. Triple checked - it was not scam or phishing letter.
Then we made a simple single developer account ... personal. It took only a month.
Great post -- As a newly diehard Android user, I will agree that while Android is definitely getting some amazing and beautiful apps, it's nothing like on the App Store. If you spend the time to design a beautiful app, there is a larger opportunity for you to unseat very popular Android apps. Android users crave great design too. Start building.
If you want to make money by directly selling something, or need people who constantly use your app => iOS still seems to have higher engagement and higher revenue.
If you want to make money by having a thing you're giving away to tons of people who need to only use your app briefly, android MIGHT be the case for tomorrow and for certain communities, today.
That said, "Android" isn't a monolith. I think Google did a tremendously good thing by incorporating so many new services into the Play Store rather than into the almost-never-updated core OS, and you should be looking at targeting THAT, not years old versions of Android, to get an updated, easy to maintain android target you do aside an iOS target. People will complain, but will also get new phones that have the Google play store with modern services.
With both versions, it's always really important to measure cost per user on a version by version, platform by platform basis.
Another thing that bothers me with development for iOS is that you need apple hardware and software. I can't develop an iOS on my Linux machine (I've tried running OSX in virtualbox, but it's slow and not to mention illegal).
I really wish Apple would make their platform a little more available. Lowering the $100 yearly fee would be a good start...
If $100 a year would allow me to develop iOS apps on my Linux laptop I'd be fine with that. But $100 a year + paying for overpriced apple hardware doesn't sound appealing.
I'm a Linux and Android user. My Android phone wasn't any cheaper than an iPhone and I can most certainly afford any Apple hardware I want. I also don't use Linux because I'm cheap, I use Linux because I love it. The hardware was exactly what I wanted too.
I don't develop for iOS because I don't want to own a Mac. I (as a long-time Linux user) find OS X incredibly frustrating.
There's also absolutely no reason to force developers to use a particular brand of hardware or a particular operating system to develop for a particular phone.
There's also absolutely no reason to force developers to use a particular brand of hardware or a particular operating system to develop for a particular phone.
Well, it costs money for Apple to support development on Windows and Linux platforms. Who's going to port Xcode and the simulator to run on those platforms? How many different types of Windows and Linux configurations are out there?
> Well, it costs money for Apple to support development on Windows and Linux platforms
The cost of doing that pales in comparison to what they are making off of iOS. If they can afford to keep developing iTunes for Windows, they can afford to port their other software. For some reason, I don't think Apple will go out of business if they give it a shot.
> How many different types of Windows and Linux configurations are out there?
So target the most prevalent ones. I don't know about all of the various configurations on linux, but it's really not so bad with Windows - just target Windows 7 or higher, and you should be good. Nobody is saying it needs to look nice or even look like a native program; we just want something we can work with, even if it looks like dog shit.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to buy something when you are only developing for it and not actually planning on using it. I sometimes develop software for Windows, and I hate running it, so I won't purchase a copy of it. But that shouldn't prevent me from developing for it.
No, I'm saying that I cross compile and have others test things out. I develop mostly with C++ and rarely need to use OS-level APIs that aren't included in things like Qt or Boost.
Exercise for people who think Macs are overpriced: find a machine with a solid state drive, excellent battery life, well built case, and high quality keyboard and trackpad for substantially less than the price of a Macbook Air.
(writing this from 15" early 2013 rMBP) You can build a hackintosh with comparable specs for much cheaper than the equivalent Mac Pro, but the laptop space is no-contest
Sorry, should have specified laptop. The Mac Pro is a terrible way to purchase raw computing power - it's there mostly for OSX-based media professionals.
Just remove well-built case and high-quality keyboard from that list and I can buy a laptop with much, much more power for the same price as a Macbook Air.
It's worse than that, I'm afraid. You need the absolute latest of both.
My perfectly fine Macbook from 2008 should be more than adequate for developing iOS apps. It's a core2 duo with 2GB of RAM. I mean, these aren't exactly the days of Pentium 60 vs. XT 8088.
Yet the max OS I can upgrade to is Lion. And that's with going through Snow Leopard first. And who knows how much longer Xcode will work on Lion.
"5 years old" is a pretty far cry from "absolute latest". My 2008 Core2 Duo MacBook, upgraded to 5GB of RAM and an SSD, works like a champ for iPhone development. I don't understand this complaint.
at best you can run OS X Lion. That's it. Before you even get to that, though, you have to upgrade to Snow Leopard for silly arbitrary reasons.
OS X is currently on Mountain Lion, going to Mavericks real soon now. I would not count on Xcode running on Lion for any real length of time now. After that, you're 100% screwed.
Contrast that to Windows XP, where I can still run the latest iTunes and sync the latest iPhone 5 with. Can't do that in Leopard, either.
Wow, I'm amazed they dropped support for computers that recent. New versions Windows/Linux will still run on very old hardware, there are usually drivers around.
He apparently had the bad luck to own the most recently made model of Macintosh that will not run Mountain Lion; virtually every other Mac from 2008 is OK.
The business case for supporting older computers is very different for Microsoft (or for Linux) than it is for Apple.
OK, so ~6 years later, I get a new laptop. The only reason I haven't already is because the MacBook was a great machine to start with.
I understand the complaint if mobile development is a hobby (then yes, iOS development gets expensive very quickly), but if it's how you make your living then it's literally a rounding error.
I have a 2008 MacBook (5,1) which I upgraded to 8GB RAM and an SSD. It runs Mountain Lion just fine. I use it for all sorts of things including Xcode. No idea what you're talking about here.
He must have the last plastic MacBook (4,1), which has a 32-bit EFI firmware and will not boot a 64-bit kernel; Mountain Lion only has a 64-bit kernel. So, even if one thinks it should run Mountain Lion, it can't run Mountain Lion. End of discussion.
If he wants to actually run Mountain Lion and develop for iOS (instead of complaining that he can't do it on his current machine), then $850 at the Apple Store will get him a refurbished MacBook Air (last year's model) that will be probably be much nicer to use (it will certainly be much lighter and have longer battery life). He could probably get a couple hundred bucks for his old one if it's in decent shape.
I think the $100/y makes sense from Apple's perspective and is probably one of the reasons why there are fewer shitty apps than Google, this along with all of the other confusing stuff they do, like provisioning profiles. It simply scares off the hobby developers who don't really want to build for the platform but rather try it out.
The IOS Development process is outdated and kind of crappy, but there are simple tacitly accepted solutions that fix virtually all of the issues. Specifically:
- Hockey App For Pre Public Distribution - Auto Updates, One Click Link Install (no need to join a google group)
- Enterprise account - no device ids, send the link to anyone
The dev cycle on mobile is slower, and more waterfall, but there is no excuse to not be iterating on anything more than 3-5 day cycles on either android or IOS.
Fred Wilson would beg to differ (at least until a few weeks ago, and even then, his reasons for switching are not what you might think).
Seriously, no (good) VC is going to decline to invest just because you're Android-first instead of iOS-first, if that's a decision that actually makes sense for your target market.
If you're alright ignoring the far more profitable iOS market, then sure, Android is better. But if you're trying to operate a startup that actually needs to make money, it is not a smart business decision to ignore it. Complain as much as you want, but iOS still provides a better opportunity than Android in the very large majority of cases and because of that, I'm ok dealing with the headaches that come with it.
If you're alright ignoring the far more profitable iOS market, then sure, Android is better. But if you're trying to operate a startup that actually needs to make money, it is not a smart business decision to ignore it. Complain as much as you want, but iOS still provides a better opportunity than Android in the very large majority of cases and because of that, I'm ok dealing with the headaches that come with it.
Another post on the top of Hacker News making the mistake of thinking paying customers give a crap about how easy it is to [write|deploy|test|debug] your app. Even with all the pain associated with the App Store people still write more apps for it than ever. Why? Cause people pay for apps there. They don't on the Play Store.
People on iOS are more willing to buy apps and do more in-app purchases but the gap doesn't seem that wide to bridge, especially as iOS users move to Android.
I think a lot of that comes from the iTunes gift cards that everybody seems to get for Christmas, Birthdays, etc. I purchased my first app with "real" money a month or two ago for android.
To clarify the parent comment, I see iTunes gift cards for sale at grocery store checkout lines. Perfect spontaneous purchases. Where do you even buy a Google Play gift card?
This is another post that seems to have missed the point of the linked article. The last graph I saw estimated total revenue from iOS apps was about 2x that of total Play Store revenue (though to be fair, this undercounts Android a little as you can monetize apps via Amazon et. al. too). And of course Android is growing much faster.
The contention in the linked article is that by pushing your "startup" app (which they imply to be a high quality app in a novel category) into the Android ecosystem first you can take advantage of the generally poorer app quality to get a "bigger piece of the pie". (This is the same argument that was made for years about Mac game development, btw.)
I'm not quite sure I buy all of that, but arguing against is has to be a lot more subtle than asserting that Android users "don't pay for apps".
The reason those "data points" are skewed is psychology. No one is inspired to write a vitriolic blog post whining that their Android app only makes 73% as much as the iOS version. Nor is the iOS-centric HN echo chamber well equipped to give you a random sample of these things. And, frankly, lots of those bigger numbers are simply old. Android's market share is growing rapidly. Three years ago, I think 10x was probably correct.
2.3x is still very significant. Would you rather make 3k a month, or 6.9k a month? One of those is 36k a year. The other is 82.8k a year. I know which one I'd prefer.
Yet again, though, this is confusing revenue across the platform with revenue per app/developer/development-hour/etc... The contention in the linked article is that you can get a "bigger slice of the smaller pie" by being an early mover on Android. That may not be true, but you can't argue against it by shouting about the size of the pie as a whole.
That could be true, but not necessarily. There is an opportunity cost to take into account. Is it better to port to the other platform, or just work on another app for the same platform?
I think there are lots of advantages and good reasons to target both, but as long as the majority of the revenue comes from iOS, it makes sense to target iOS first.
Also, lots can happen between now and 2017. 4 years ago nokia and blackberry were still competing. iOS or Android could in theory be small players in 4 years. (Note that I don't think that will be the case, but it's possible.)
One can tell that Apple have sent invites for a town hall event, the negative stories are ramping up.
> Nor is the iOS-centric HN echo chamber...
Read the comments here. The significant majority are pro-Android. The whole 'plucky little Android' schtick is extremely tiresome and frankly devalues your point. The "psychology" that you cite is basically confirmation bias, so beautifully illustrated by your comment.
Whilst Android is making gains is some markets, so Apple is in others. Apple is up before a hardware update in the UK, France and US, taking share away from Android.
Of the data points that in your circle you see, you mean? I've seen anecdotes recently of publishers making much more on the Android market. That's the thing about anecdotes.
The most recent stats are that they are closing very fast.
On here. There have been various front-pagers on here by people demonstrating better Android sales than iOS.
But it is incredibly variable. How are they marketed? Do they pander to the demographics? Do they take advantage of the platforms? Are they crowded segments on each platform? How does it compare to the incumbents in those segments? Etc. It is impossible to separate all of those, which is why such comparisons are usually bunk.
Android has just passed 1 million apps (so clearly more apps are added to Android, faster), and has more app downloads than Apple now. It's also just passed 1 billion devices.
Whatever the story of Android has been in the passed, things are rapidly changing, and it's better to be there first, instead of coming in later to an established competition.
I think this article is more directed at startups that are offering some kind of mobile mostly functionality, they should think about doing development Android first.
Tests about different directions to take, or anything, really, are much simpler with a faster turnaround.
While I entirely agree with your lead in, your last bit is very "where the puck was" thinking.
Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still months old. Do you see where this is going?
The #1 source of revenue for many games and other media on the App Store is via gifted iTunes cards. This is a mechanism that is only now finding its way to Android.
Kids don't have credit cards connected to their iTunes account, and thus receive iTunes gift cards for music, which they turn around and use for apps, IAPs for games, etc.
I don't have any source for that, or even necessarily believe it (I don't disbelieve it either) ... I'm just pointing out what OP meant by that comment.
iTunes cards are a hugely popular gift for children / teenagers / college kids, quickly exchanged for fart apps and in app smurfberries. The nascent Google simile of this is still minuscule in comparison, making gifting in the Android market a much less pleasant affair. I would gather that the KitKat promotion is partly to help spread awareness of Play cards.
As a second effect, people don't think of things like iTunes cards as real money. Give someone $50 on an iTunes cards and, I suspect, it will see much less discretion than a $50 bill.
I'd also add that Apple had a head start on doing payments in many countries. Google is catching up in this respect as well. If Google were to promote paid apps a bit more, we could see developer revenue parity a year or so.
It is also a bit comical that iTunes Connect is down today.
"Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still months old. Do you see where this is going?"
Sure: I see that, if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second.
(And can I say that I continue to hate the "puck" quote and, while it was a mildly clever over-generalization when Jobs used it, nowadays it seems mostly to be used as a kind of pompous way to say nothing useful whatsoever. Which is to say: In a few years everyone's going to be freakin' tired of that quote and so continuing whip it out is very "where the puck was.")
Fascinating commentary about the "puck" quote, which existed decades before Jobs ever uttered it (did he? I know it as a quote that Gretzky's father told #99. Even that is unnecessary attribution, as it is fundamental training that every kid learns about hockey, and the wisdom is as old as the sport). The point of it, your personal hang-ups about it notwithstanding, is obvious: When a market is changing quickly, if you're undertaking a project that is going to take time -- which pretty much all mobile projects do -- you target where the market will be when you hit it, not where it was last year, or even right now.
if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second
Personally I target both "first", because the tools and methods to do so are simple and effective. However if you are somehow making Absolutely Median Software, then sure. Reality tends to be dramatically more nuanced, and such a blanket statement is almost certainly naive nonsense.
"Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still months old. Do you see where this is going?"
Yes, the Play Store revenue may be gaining on iTunes revenue. -- but per-app revenue in The Play Store has not necessarily grown. Revenue growth indicates nothing without the number of apps on each platform. Since the Play Store has more apps than iTunes, we cannot reliably correlate an increasing revenue (and a decreasing revenue differential) with increasing per-app revenue.
In fact, per-developer revenue represents more useful data than per-app revenue. Since the developer (firm or individual) pays the cost of residing on the platform, he also recoups the revenue. He can decide to reinvest revenue in more apps. Therefore we should not exclude developers with multiple apps from our model. So we use per-developer revenue instead of per-app revenue.
What is the per-developer revenue of The Play Store and iTunes?
The Play store has more apps, so the per-app revenue has not necessarily grown
The overwhelming majority of apps on both platforms are free. Among what I could charitably call "pay-worthy" apps, my personal impression is that there are probably a magnitude more on the iOS platform. Indeed, this submission seems to talk to that, pointing out that there is more of an opening for quality apps on Android.
I've never respected any number of apps metric because they are overwhelmingly chaff.
I salute you, because those metrics are garbage.
Also, that's the point that I hearkened to the most as well, the screenshots of those apps hit home all my kind of janky android apps that work great and I love... but could easily be beaten by a bit of concerted effort.
I know there are a lot of arguments AGAINST the play store, but this is quite real and imo quite valid.
Can you please clarify with some references where you got that from .. and whether that trend you mention is not because the revenues on iOS are also going down?
You missed the point as well. Author is a proponent of the lean startup approach to product development: customer development -> validation -> pivot -> mvp -> product market fit -> etc. It's not about customer caring how you're building your app, it's about building a product truly worth their while, while saving time and money. Author posits that as it stands, the iOS ecosystem hinders on that approach, while Android's encourages it or at least does not discourage it. Author notes that oddly enough, many startups still choose to go iOS first even as it makes less and less sense.
On a personal level, I'm currently witnessing the phenomenon. We're at the moment creating a mobile app for an organization. When development of the Android version ended, people at the organization chose to shun it and decided to rather wait to test the iOS version, thinking that delivery was just around the corner. It's been 3 months now.
The quantity in dollars is completely and utterly irrelevant to the validated learning lean startups need. The OP's point is that Android allows you to start learning sooner and faster and to produce a better app which will make you more money.
iOS might make you more money right now if you're lucky enough to chance on an app which matches what users already want, but even that ship may soon be sailing.
Suppose iOS apps pay two times as much on average right now. Tell me: what is two times one-tenth of what you should be earning? You're hobbling yourself by MUCH MORE building an app that inadequately addresses your user's needs.
This is all predicated on the idea that you being able to release apks easily gets users who care enough too give you valuable feedback that you can use to learn and improve your app faster.
There are more apps on the play store than the iOS store, and apks have always been easy to work with and had this same advantage.
If this advantage has always been present, why aren't the apps already better than iOS apps?
You've been able to share apks "forever" (since before the G1, I believe), but Google's official beta-testing framework (Play Store integration [don't even need unknown sources], rolling/controlled updates, beta test volunteers, etc. plus the pattern of tying that to a G+ community) is brand-new since I/O this year.
And it seems to be a compelling package - pretty much every app beta I care about has switched to it (even those that already had an existing off-Play-Store setup).
Just because you have potential does not guarantee you use it.
Many businesses started on iOS first, producing an Android version as an afterthought by contractors. Others produced a minimum viable product which made them money, so they felt no need to iterate. This means upstart competitors can easily take away the market share of established products. It's a good thing for startups.
I'm saying there's more opportunity because the expensive applications built by large developer teams are still being built for iOS first. Android is still an afterthought in some app categories.
Most successful startups began with a niche. Look at AirBNB's cheap conference attendees or Microsoft's Altair owners.
Another comment on the top of a Hacker News post making the mistake of thinking that all good revenue sources are good revenue sources for startups.
Customers don't give a crap about how easy it is to [write|deploy|test|debug], but if you add a lot of friction to the iterative process, you take away a lot of the advantage a small startup might have over an established business operating in the same space.
Established businesses actually have a lot of efficiencies when it comes to maintaining the status quo and slowly evolving change, and the Apple AppStore model adds enough friction such that status quo and slowly evolving change are much more of the terrain than not.
Keep in mind the innovator's dilemma, and think about how startups exploit it. You want to pick some area where the established businesses aren't competitive, which has narrow margins, larger scale, faster development cycles... and then when you've got a lean and mean product, you go after the established territory.
"the mistake of thinking paying customers give a crap about how easy it is to [write|deploy|test|debug] your app"
In general I agree but if those things have a material effect on how good the app is (e.g. "focused" functionality) then I think the customers would "give a crap".
What is it that causes people to indulge in such hyperbole on this point? It's such an utterly ridiculous statement (obviously, people do buy things on the Play Store, there are plenty of paid apps with tens of thousands of purchases), yet it gets trotted out time and time again as an absolute as if it is an obvious accepted fact. How about a tiny bit of moderation:
"People pay for things less often on the Play Store"
It looks to me like the trend on the iOS app store is also downwards to the cheap/free end - i.e. a race to the bottom. My paid niche app ($5) used to get a couple of downloads a week. I made it free for one week, during which I got about 500 downloads. There is interest, but no willingness to pay for it. I think the overall statistic of $5B paid to devs with about 500,000 apps on the app store gives an average of $10k per app. So one app can get you, what, one month's salary? Even that's rosy I think, 'cos the distribution is not uniform but a long tail exponential, which means the me-the-solo-dev is more likely to fall on the tail than near the elite end of the exponential.
Bottom line is that I'm beginning to think that a mobile-only company strategy is likely to be doomed. Anyone thinks otherwise?
Semi-related rant: My sole experience with Apple Developer stuff was being forced to register as one to get some basic command-line tools on my Mac.
They made me complete a questionnaire about exactly which kinds of Apple products I wanted to develop for, and "none" wasn't an option. That's kind of a weird, Apple-centric worldview. "Errrm, I'm doing web development..."
Basically the author thinks that you can test the market if a particular idea / app is worth making by releasing on Android first. The problem is that the android users will most likely hate the UI and the bugs as it will probably be thrown together.
When releasing an app on iOS, you don't have to include ALL features, you can release an app that is well designed and functions well with limited functionality. Then add features as you need to.
That's what we did when we released our app. We released for iOS first and then for android, but we gradually added features as needed or wanted.
I'm not following your arguments at all. Android apps must inherently be buggy and "thrown together"? Android apps must "include ALL features" before release?
- You can iterate quickly on android. If you notice that people don't care for your app, you can stop at the splash screen I assume. Or stop when you've added enough features that and yet no one is downloading.
- When you release on android, it's almost instant. This means that you don't test it as well as you should because you know you can always patch it tomorrow.
Of course I'm referring to the App Store as that's what your comment was about. If you want to publish on the App Store you need to make sure your app can't be thought of as 'limited' as then the reviewer could reject it, citing rule 2.12 - whereas on Android you can release almost whatever you want.
Ah, I understand now. I was referring to minor features that will take a long time to implement. I understand that you can't release just a splash screen.
In every product, there core features, then there are minor / convenience features. Let's say you have a "search" feature. That is a core part of the app / product / service. Some features that you can probably put off are: "advanced search", "refinement search", or even "sorting results". All of these are convenient, but you may want to have the app in store without these features.
> The problem is that the android users will most likely hate the UI and the bugs as it will probably be thrown together.
This is where your argument breaks down. It assumes that because you are on Android, you app is shoddy. That need not be the case. Android gets a bad rap for being "hard to develop for", but that's only the case if you try and hit the entire 2., 3. and 4.* userbase.
If you limit yourself to 4.*, the dev work is very comparable. It's just a lot of people are utterly convinced they need to put in 2-3x the work to pick up that 40% of the market.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadAlso, my theory is that once there are enough quality apps on Android, we will start to see the center of popularity shift to Android from iOS.
Until Android on a whole proves to be more lucrative to monetize apps, many developers will continue building iOS first (imho).
You're just saying that not everyone will take the advice. Well, yeah. :)
However, it is premature at this stage to state that Android is the better platform for startups.
Did you happen to use Apple's DUNS lookup form? https://developer.apple.com/ios/enroll/dunsLookupForm.action
Yes, I used Apple's D-U-N-S lookup form. Here's a quick summary of what's happened so far:
The first time I submitted the request for a D-U-N-S number through Apple's form, I did not receive a call. After ten days, I called D&B to see what was going on, and they said they didn't have a record of the request. So somewhere between Apple and D-U-N-S, the request was lost.
I submitted the request again, and I got a call from D&B five days later. They sent the D-U-N-S number after the call, but their email indicated it wouldn't be usable for 14 days! I tried it on the Developer Center registration form anyway, but, like they said, it didn't work, so I waited.
At the end of the two weeks, the Developer Center was down for new enrollment--for another two weeks. Once it was functioning again, I submitted the enrollment request with the D-U-N-S number.
Twenty days later, I received an email from Apple telling me that my LLC's legal status wasn't listed on D&B's profile, so I'd need to work it out with them. Oh, and I'd need to restart the enrollment process.
After contacting D&B, I received conflicting emails from them, one telling me that "my request was complete" and one sent at exactly the same time telling me that the changes would be made within the next week and a half. I sent Apple an email detailing this and asking for the enrollment to be continued where it left off rather than going to the back of the queue--which was twenty days the last time--so we'll see if that goes anywhere. I've read some accounts of having a months-long ordeal ahead even from this point in the process.
I realize things are probably a bit worse at the moment because of the Developer Center problems, but that doesn't change the fact that this process is extremely off-putting and it sours me a bit to development on their platform.
If you think you may ever apply for a government grant or contract then you will need a DUNS. I applied through this page for a Canadian non-profit and got the number in less than a week (though I had to go through a web chat on a different D&B page to actually find a D&B employee who would give me the number since they never emailed it to me).
It's still a shitshow, and Apple should either work with D&B to develop a more streamlined process like what they have with the Government, or find a better provider.
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
My options waere to either invest about $8000 to become a AB or open a LLC in UK while living in Sweden. After half a year of trying and failing I just gave up and stopped developing for iOS.
Now I just started developing for Firefox OS and hope for the best. My first app is even on the Marketplace already: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/
That's nice, but will it translate into sales? Probably not, given the horror stories of Android piracy that seem to come out every few weeks (particularly in the gaming market).
Of course, many startups profit in hype instead of dollars, so maybe that's irrelevant.
IMO, when I download ETrade App on my smartphone, it is good to know that someone checked that it was submitted by someone who is from ETrade really. If the process is rigorous for E*Trade, so be it. But as an end user I'd prefer it to be that way instead of making it _my_ responsible to verify before installing the app.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/08/how-app-store-grifters-...
From what I understand, absent a legal judgment Apple doesn't do much to police copycats, misleading names and the like.
Seriously. It's documented iOS has had malware: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/07/06/...
Open vs closed & other religious wars aside, it's ridiculous to imply that both platforms carry the same risk to end users.
The play store scans every submitted the apps for malware (in the last versions it also scans applications NOT installed through the play store).
I don't want to be pedantic, it's just that I know more about this platform and I would like to be corrected if I say something wrong about platforms that I'm not familiar with.
Given the review process, the odds may be longer that a particular app is malware, but given the size of the store I think it is virtually certain there is still some undetected malware in it.
Android piracy isn't a horror story for users (unless they download a pirated app that's been injected with an address-book upload trojan, which is not unheard of). It IS a horror story for a startup trying to make money on Android, which is why it gets deserved traction in tech blogs and HN. And which is why the original article is flawed in the way the OP indicated.
Piracy? Meh, all those users are in developing countries and won't buy your app anyway!
They set up the barriers the moment you want to register a company. Presumably so that you can't pretend to be representing someone else's company.
It's hard enough to peg a real user need and deliver on that need in a satisfying, sticky way. It's at the core of what a startup needs to do to cultivate that product development discipline as a team, and tools that make that harder are insult to injury.
As others have mentioned, though, none of these app startups are launching just for a smooth development experience. And Android just hasn't shown that users will reliably upgrade their OS, much less pay for apps like iOS users do. Until that changes, even if the better dev experience will accelerate a shift, it's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem on app quality.
One tricky thing is that even if your app is really nicely crafted, it might be hard for users to find it without lots of out-of-play-store promotion.
You are assuming that there is demand for anything but free apps. I know that I personally would kill to pay for top-quality Android apps like I do on iOS, but I don't think I speak for the majority of Android users. Based on everything that I've seen, they just don't want to pay.
Which I think is what Will's betting on.
I've always thought Google's greatest achievement was to convince people that they are getting free services..
I spent $20 on this over the free options (like K9 email) or the free ad-supported MailDroid version, because it is a high quality app and it looks very, very nice. Especially on my new Nexus 7's full HD screen.
That said, I'm pretty sure I'm not part of the majority here. Just raising a hand saying that some people will pay serious money for good stuff. And they're not all on iOS.
Because some niches are really poorly covered on Android, apps that fill those may have greater success than they would on iOS.
Software-savvy giants like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon pretty much don't care about stomping on your little niche (esp. if it's due to a deficiency in the platform/system) if it helps them one-up their competitor.
I dunno, I make web stuff. I just like watching you guys duke it out.
Whether that is enough to make it a 'better' platform depends on what your needs are.
If I were doing a mobile startup and needed fast feedback on devices, Android's fast turnaround sure would be interesting. Not the deciding factor, but definitely a check in the Android column.
There is no way forward for (paid) Android apps that can make a living. You need to sell on iOS in order to make any sort of revenue.
So if your startup is built on a free app, then by all means use Android to test your idea. But if you want to make things and sell them for money, then putting up with the App Store model is more than worth the amount of money you can make compared to Android.
> There is no way forward for (paid) Android apps that can make a living.
Why do you say this? I concede it may be true for games, but games are actually one of the hardest places to make a living. Make not-game apps and your expectation of payment and your likelihood of piracy plummet.
I've actually never personally met an indy iOS developer making their money on not-games, come to think of it.
I easily spend $15-30/mo on android apps. I go out of my way to buy ad-less versions but I do appreciate that I can try an app for a few days even with an ugly, unfit ad.
Yes, that is kind of sad. As someone who does pay for Android software, I imagine I'm in the minority. I've got extended family members who balk at the notion of paying even a dollar for software on Android.
OTOH, I'm curious how many paid apps on the iOS App store actually hit the break-even point.
Then we made a simple single developer account ... personal. It took only a month.
http://paulstamatiou.com/android-is-better
If you want to make money by directly selling something, or need people who constantly use your app => iOS still seems to have higher engagement and higher revenue.
If you want to make money by having a thing you're giving away to tons of people who need to only use your app briefly, android MIGHT be the case for tomorrow and for certain communities, today.
That said, "Android" isn't a monolith. I think Google did a tremendously good thing by incorporating so many new services into the Play Store rather than into the almost-never-updated core OS, and you should be looking at targeting THAT, not years old versions of Android, to get an updated, easy to maintain android target you do aside an iOS target. People will complain, but will also get new phones that have the Google play store with modern services.
With both versions, it's always really important to measure cost per user on a version by version, platform by platform basis.
I really wish Apple would make their platform a little more available. Lowering the $100 yearly fee would be a good start...
I don't develop for iOS because I don't want to own a Mac. I (as a long-time Linux user) find OS X incredibly frustrating.
There's also absolutely no reason to force developers to use a particular brand of hardware or a particular operating system to develop for a particular phone.
Well, it costs money for Apple to support development on Windows and Linux platforms. Who's going to port Xcode and the simulator to run on those platforms? How many different types of Windows and Linux configurations are out there?
The cost of doing that pales in comparison to what they are making off of iOS. If they can afford to keep developing iTunes for Windows, they can afford to port their other software. For some reason, I don't think Apple will go out of business if they give it a shot.
> How many different types of Windows and Linux configurations are out there?
So target the most prevalent ones. I don't know about all of the various configurations on linux, but it's really not so bad with Windows - just target Windows 7 or higher, and you should be good. Nobody is saying it needs to look nice or even look like a native program; we just want something we can work with, even if it looks like dog shit.
It's worse than that, I'm afraid. You need the absolute latest of both.
My perfectly fine Macbook from 2008 should be more than adequate for developing iOS apps. It's a core2 duo with 2GB of RAM. I mean, these aren't exactly the days of Pentium 60 vs. XT 8088.
Yet the max OS I can upgrade to is Lion. And that's with going through Snow Leopard first. And who knows how much longer Xcode will work on Lion.
OS X is currently on Mountain Lion, going to Mavericks real soon now. I would not count on Xcode running on Lion for any real length of time now. After that, you're 100% screwed.
Contrast that to Windows XP, where I can still run the latest iTunes and sync the latest iPhone 5 with. Can't do that in Leopard, either.
The business case for supporting older computers is very different for Microsoft (or for Linux) than it is for Apple.
I understand the complaint if mobile development is a hobby (then yes, iOS development gets expensive very quickly), but if it's how you make your living then it's literally a rounding error.
If he wants to actually run Mountain Lion and develop for iOS (instead of complaining that he can't do it on his current machine), then $850 at the Apple Store will get him a refurbished MacBook Air (last year's model) that will be probably be much nicer to use (it will certainly be much lighter and have longer battery life). He could probably get a couple hundred bucks for his old one if it's in decent shape.
- Hockey App For Pre Public Distribution - Auto Updates, One Click Link Install (no need to join a google group) - Enterprise account - no device ids, send the link to anyone
The dev cycle on mobile is slower, and more waterfall, but there is no excuse to not be iterating on anything more than 3-5 day cycles on either android or IOS.
it's really that simple.
Fred Wilson would beg to differ (at least until a few weeks ago, and even then, his reasons for switching are not what you might think).
Seriously, no (good) VC is going to decline to invest just because you're Android-first instead of iOS-first, if that's a decision that actually makes sense for your target market.
Is this based on your opinion, or what?
http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/17985/20130531/ios-app...
People on iOS are more willing to buy apps and do more in-app purchases but the gap doesn't seem that wide to bridge, especially as iOS users move to Android.
Google Play gift cards exist too, I don't know if you can buy music with it though, if not it's logic that iTunes cards sells better.
I've been using Android since I got rid of the iPhone 3G (circa Nexus One), and this thread is the _first_ time I've heard of it being available.
The contention in the linked article is that by pushing your "startup" app (which they imply to be a high quality app in a novel category) into the Android ecosystem first you can take advantage of the generally poorer app quality to get a "bigger piece of the pie". (This is the same argument that was made for years about Mac game development, btw.)
I'm not quite sure I buy all of that, but arguing against is has to be a lot more subtle than asserting that Android users "don't pay for apps".
If Google had sent that much to developers they'd be saying something. 90% of the data points we see are of the form:
My app made X on Android and 5-10X on iOS
The reason those "data points" are skewed is psychology. No one is inspired to write a vitriolic blog post whining that their Android app only makes 73% as much as the iOS version. Nor is the iOS-centric HN echo chamber well equipped to give you a random sample of these things. And, frankly, lots of those bigger numbers are simply old. Android's market share is growing rapidly. Three years ago, I think 10x was probably correct.
And 2.3 was 2.6 in January so for a really bad back of the envelope calculation we can guess 2.3 will be 1.0 sometime before 2017.
I think there are lots of advantages and good reasons to target both, but as long as the majority of the revenue comes from iOS, it makes sense to target iOS first.
Also, lots can happen between now and 2017. 4 years ago nokia and blackberry were still competing. iOS or Android could in theory be small players in 4 years. (Note that I don't think that will be the case, but it's possible.)
> Nor is the iOS-centric HN echo chamber...
Read the comments here. The significant majority are pro-Android. The whole 'plucky little Android' schtick is extremely tiresome and frankly devalues your point. The "psychology" that you cite is basically confirmation bias, so beautifully illustrated by your comment.
Whilst Android is making gains is some markets, so Apple is in others. Apple is up before a hardware update in the UK, France and US, taking share away from Android.
Of the data points that in your circle you see, you mean? I've seen anecdotes recently of publishers making much more on the Android market. That's the thing about anecdotes.
The most recent stats are that they are closing very fast.
But it is incredibly variable. How are they marketed? Do they pander to the demographics? Do they take advantage of the platforms? Are they crowded segments on each platform? How does it compare to the incumbents in those segments? Etc. It is impossible to separate all of those, which is why such comparisons are usually bunk.
Users do care how easy it is to develop, they care by proxy when they choose the earlier to market, better designed or most inovative one.
Whatever the story of Android has been in the passed, things are rapidly changing, and it's better to be there first, instead of coming in later to an established competition.
Tests about different directions to take, or anything, really, are much simpler with a faster turnaround.
Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still months old. Do you see where this is going?
The #1 source of revenue for many games and other media on the App Store is via gifted iTunes cards. This is a mechanism that is only now finding its way to Android.
It is not just a 50 USD card (or other similar values) that people buy and gift around? What this has to do with games?
I don't have any source for that, or even necessarily believe it (I don't disbelieve it either) ... I'm just pointing out what OP meant by that comment.
As a second effect, people don't think of things like iTunes cards as real money. Give someone $50 on an iTunes cards and, I suspect, it will see much less discretion than a $50 bill.
I was wondering about it...
Gift cards do not exist on my country, neither on my target markets, thus why I was kinda confused about it!
It is also a bit comical that iTunes Connect is down today.
Sure: I see that, if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second.
(And can I say that I continue to hate the "puck" quote and, while it was a mildly clever over-generalization when Jobs used it, nowadays it seems mostly to be used as a kind of pompous way to say nothing useful whatsoever. Which is to say: In a few years everyone's going to be freakin' tired of that quote and so continuing whip it out is very "where the puck was.")
if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second
Personally I target both "first", because the tools and methods to do so are simple and effective. However if you are somehow making Absolutely Median Software, then sure. Reality tends to be dramatically more nuanced, and such a blanket statement is almost certainly naive nonsense.
Indeed, which is why I dislike the "puck" bromide, regardless of who popularized it.
I thought cross-platform development creates less quality apps.
Could you please share what tools and methods are you talking about?
Yes, the Play Store revenue may be gaining on iTunes revenue. -- but per-app revenue in The Play Store has not necessarily grown. Revenue growth indicates nothing without the number of apps on each platform. Since the Play Store has more apps than iTunes, we cannot reliably correlate an increasing revenue (and a decreasing revenue differential) with increasing per-app revenue.
In fact, per-developer revenue represents more useful data than per-app revenue. Since the developer (firm or individual) pays the cost of residing on the platform, he also recoups the revenue. He can decide to reinvest revenue in more apps. Therefore we should not exclude developers with multiple apps from our model. So we use per-developer revenue instead of per-app revenue.
What is the per-developer revenue of The Play Store and iTunes?
The overwhelming majority of apps on both platforms are free. Among what I could charitably call "pay-worthy" apps, my personal impression is that there are probably a magnitude more on the iOS platform. Indeed, this submission seems to talk to that, pointing out that there is more of an opening for quality apps on Android.
I've never respected any number of apps metric because they are overwhelmingly chaff.
I know there are a lot of arguments AGAINST the play store, but this is quite real and imo quite valid.
Developers are motivated by per-DEVELOPER revenue...
not per-APP STORE revenue.
It's just crass selfishness... but there it is.
Are you being sarcastic?
On a personal level, I'm currently witnessing the phenomenon. We're at the moment creating a mobile app for an organization. When development of the Android version ended, people at the organization chose to shun it and decided to rather wait to test the iOS version, thinking that delivery was just around the corner. It's been 3 months now.
iOS might make you more money right now if you're lucky enough to chance on an app which matches what users already want, but even that ship may soon be sailing.
Suppose iOS apps pay two times as much on average right now. Tell me: what is two times one-tenth of what you should be earning? You're hobbling yourself by MUCH MORE building an app that inadequately addresses your user's needs.
There are more apps on the play store than the iOS store, and apks have always been easy to work with and had this same advantage.
If this advantage has always been present, why aren't the apps already better than iOS apps?
And it seems to be a compelling package - pretty much every app beta I care about has switched to it (even those that already had an existing off-Play-Store setup).
Many businesses started on iOS first, producing an Android version as an afterthought by contractors. Others produced a minimum viable product which made them money, so they felt no need to iterate. This means upstart competitors can easily take away the market share of established products. It's a good thing for startups.
Most successful startups began with a niche. Look at AirBNB's cheap conference attendees or Microsoft's Altair owners.
Customers don't give a crap about how easy it is to [write|deploy|test|debug], but if you add a lot of friction to the iterative process, you take away a lot of the advantage a small startup might have over an established business operating in the same space.
Established businesses actually have a lot of efficiencies when it comes to maintaining the status quo and slowly evolving change, and the Apple AppStore model adds enough friction such that status quo and slowly evolving change are much more of the terrain than not.
Keep in mind the innovator's dilemma, and think about how startups exploit it. You want to pick some area where the established businesses aren't competitive, which has narrow margins, larger scale, faster development cycles... and then when you've got a lean and mean product, you go after the established territory.
In general I agree but if those things have a material effect on how good the app is (e.g. "focused" functionality) then I think the customers would "give a crap".
What is it that causes people to indulge in such hyperbole on this point? It's such an utterly ridiculous statement (obviously, people do buy things on the Play Store, there are plenty of paid apps with tens of thousands of purchases), yet it gets trotted out time and time again as an absolute as if it is an obvious accepted fact. How about a tiny bit of moderation:
"People pay for things less often on the Play Store"
You will sound a lot less like a troll.
Your [potential] users & their value should drive the platform decision.
Bottom line is that I'm beginning to think that a mobile-only company strategy is likely to be doomed. Anyone thinks otherwise?
They made me complete a questionnaire about exactly which kinds of Apple products I wanted to develop for, and "none" wasn't an option. That's kind of a weird, Apple-centric worldview. "Errrm, I'm doing web development..."
Basically the author thinks that you can test the market if a particular idea / app is worth making by releasing on Android first. The problem is that the android users will most likely hate the UI and the bugs as it will probably be thrown together.
When releasing an app on iOS, you don't have to include ALL features, you can release an app that is well designed and functions well with limited functionality. Then add features as you need to.
That's what we did when we released our app. We released for iOS first and then for android, but we gradually added features as needed or wanted.
- You can iterate quickly on android. If you notice that people don't care for your app, you can stop at the splash screen I assume. Or stop when you've added enough features that and yet no one is downloading.
- When you release on android, it's almost instant. This means that you don't test it as well as you should because you know you can always patch it tomorrow.
You sure do have to include a lot of features though. You've no chance if your app is a simple one because you'll get hit with one of these:
2.12: Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected
In every product, there core features, then there are minor / convenience features. Let's say you have a "search" feature. That is a core part of the app / product / service. Some features that you can probably put off are: "advanced search", "refinement search", or even "sorting results". All of these are convenient, but you may want to have the app in store without these features.
This is where your argument breaks down. It assumes that because you are on Android, you app is shoddy. That need not be the case. Android gets a bad rap for being "hard to develop for", but that's only the case if you try and hit the entire 2., 3. and 4.* userbase.
If you limit yourself to 4.*, the dev work is very comparable. It's just a lot of people are utterly convinced they need to put in 2-3x the work to pick up that 40% of the market.