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Android is for startups

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Re: Android is for startups

#91

Post by bjansn »

discostrings wrote: post #4

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 acc…

No registration allowed from your country? We registered a developer account on our business in The Netherlands a while ago. No problem at all.

Re: Android is for startups

#92

Post by krschultz »

tomasien wrote: post #71

It's perfectly fine to argue the merits of Android development, but arguing that it's hard to run an app on your own device using XCode is dishonest. It handles provisioning profiles automatically, and you can even hit "fix it" if it doesn't find a valid one when you try to run it. I've been building an app for Android for 2 weeks now, and I still can't get the phone settings on an Android phone to use it for develop…

"Note: On Android 4.2 and newer, Developer options is hidden by default. To make it available, go to Settings > About phone and tap Build number seven times. Return to the previous screen to find Developer options."

http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html

Re: Android is for startups

#93

Post by clarky07 »

ajross wrote: post #75
Steko wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last graph I saw estimated total revenue from iOS apps was about 2x that of total Play Store revenue 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

I had to dig up a cite. This isn't the article that I remember looking at, but it's probably reporting the same number (specifically that iOS revenue is 2.3x that of Android): http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/31/android-in-app-downloads/ 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…

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.

Re: Android is for startups

#94

Post by Apocryphon »

This is the most tiresome religious war. While it's interesting to compare and contrast development experiences between Android and iOS, this comment thread seems mostly a lot of outrage between partisans of both platforms. Which makes me wonder where devs who use PhoneGap and other bridge frameworks, or HTML5, feel about all of this.

Re: Android is for startups

#95

Post by domness »

Hmm, I think a lot of people are missing the whole point in this article. I do around 60% Ruby on Rails, 35% iOS and 5% Android dev. The idea around a "lean" startup being, that an MVP, or each new feature, or even testing a change to a previous feature is usually done in quick succession. This being testing with current users over a period of say, a week, and then from the results, changes can be made and the team have learned from the testing.

So really, Android allows for this quick succession of testing features and iterating as quick as possible, with even to a few hours turnaround. Also, that it would cost a lot in development time to get something "just right" for the App Store for it to be accepted, whereas with Android you can keep on iterating and pushing changes without having to spent a huge amount of time making everything look perfect, and be absolute minimal in terms of bugs.

I love iOS development, and yes, I agree with most people on here about the revenue from iOS, the people paying for apps, Apple's process of helping keep out most malware etc. etc., but for the sake of a "lean" startup, spending extra weeks testing apps making sure it's completely bug free and "looking good enough" for iOS, as well as the wait for Apple to accept the application (and then for users to download the update, in the case of iOS 7, this has been solved), Android is a much better dev option for these changes.

Of course, when the team knows that the app is something that people care for, and they have a decent knowledge of what users want, what features they use, and the kind of value that the mobile app brings to them, then they can go ahead and make the best possible iOS app.

TL;DR

Saving time, money and quick iterations, learning from customers and getting quick data for problem validation, is much easier and faster on Android, than the process on iOS. Think Lean Startup.

Re: Android is for startups

#96

Post by krschultz »

KirinDave wrote: post #86
x0054 wrote: post #49

I think the difference in development comes in when you need to do some hardware testing. With apple you need to design for 3 different display sizes, with 2 resolutions each. You also have to test your product on (at most) 12 different devices, and that's if you really want to cover the field. On the other hand, with Android, if you want to do it right, you need to design for hundreds of different screen sizes, all…

You can shave away a LOT of form factors if you just agree to cut off development before Android 4.0. This is tough for people to resolve to do, but in the US that's 60% of the market. I'd rather ship a good product to 60% of the people in a reasonable amount of time, rather than spending a ton of time working on tiny slices of the last 40% and limiting what the product can do overall. You also end up targeting much…

For my market, 90% of my app's users are 4.0+. 97% of all sessions are 4.0+.

I still support & test pre-4.0, but I'm starting to consider options for spending less time on Gingerbread support. Progressive enhancement helps (we just don't do a lot of things on Gingerbread at all), but it still clutters up the code. Even a few months ago I couldn't imagine dropping Gingerbread support, but I have seen almost no growth in Gingerbread users over the last 3-6 months.

Re: Android is for startups

#97

Post by css771 »

Steko wrote: post #64
jordanthoms wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Go with Android because that's where all the users are! Piracy? Meh, all those users are in developing countries and won't buy your app 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.

Re: Android is for startups

#98

Post by grbalaffa »

All this talk about process, but not a word about the quality of the SDK itself. Android is quite frankly still very far behind when it comes to really basic things. Here's just one example: iOS has had easy support for custom fonts in native UI elements since the early days, meanwhile here is the situation on Android:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2973270/using-a-custom-ty...

(Yes, the thread was started in 2010, but scroll to the bottom to see more recent comments -- things have scarcely gotten any better.)

Anyone who has actually deployed a non-trivial app on both Android and iOS knows quite well which one is the "better" development environment.

Re: Android is for startups

#99

Post by benologist »

gonzo wrote: post #81
benologist wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amazon app store has millions of paying customers waiting for your app.

... to go on sale for $0.

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.
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