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Android is for startups

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Re: Android is for startups

#181

Post by corresation »

engrenage wrote: post #175
corresation wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My app made X on Android and 5-10X on iOS 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.

Where have you seen these anecdotes?

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.

Re: Android is for startups

#182

Post by [deleted] »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #117
corresation wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Android is for startups

#183

Post by chatmasta »

corresation wrote: post #109
benihana wrote: post #39

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.

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…

"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?

Re: Android is for startups

#184

Post by ryandrake »

domness wrote: post #138
ryandrake wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mobile app user, I don't want daily updates from your app as you "iterate" away and try to figure out what to build. I want to download the finished product that works. I'm not your free beta testing service. If you want to test concepts, do proper market research.

Well then you wouldn't be the early adopter :) The idea is to test it against early adopters who don't mind about these quick changes and are less worried about bugs, because the idea/product is something that's good enough to help you in some way, shape or form. May I ask, what's proper market research? Considering you can get so far with "proper market research", but it definitely doesn't tell the whole picture. Pe…

I should have said, "traditional market research" instead, including trend and competitive analysis, segmentation, primary research such as focus groups and surveys, prototyping in front of a representative sample of users, etc.

An iterative approach is fine, once the above basics have been done, but if you need to deploy code changes in an app every day or even every week, the product is probably not ready for V1 yet.

Re: Android is for startups

#185

Post by zmmmmm »

engrenage wrote: post #178
zmmmmm wrote: post #173

A lot of people seem to be missing the main point here. I don't think the article is actually advocating developing for Android and NOT iOS. I don't think it is even particularly advocating releasing on Android first. However starting your development on Android - as your first way of prototyping and finding your MVP - gives you a tremendous amount of agility and flexibility. You can create as many APKs as you want,…

There are more Android apps than iOS apps, and this advantage has always been present. So, why aren't Android apps already of superior quality?

Well, so many reasons ... until 4.0 the whole framework was ugly and the tools were very immature compared to where they are now. Few developers, especially ones who care about design, had much or any experience building apps for Android. A lot of early Android developers were either people with no experience at all or iOS developers who tried to apply iOS principles to Android development and failed hard. And it's possible the Android user base in general cared less about design so that in itself was not such a high priority (perhaps this is not so true now).

But aside from all that, this discussion is not really about quality per se. It is about figuring out your business idea, getting it right. Whether you then go and execute it well after that point is a different point.

Re: Android is for startups

#186

Post by corresation »

chatmasta wrote: post #183
corresation wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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 P…

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.

Re: Android is for startups

#187

Post by chasing »

corresation wrote: post #168
chasing wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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-generali…

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…

"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.

Re: Android is for startups

#188

Post by nl »

warfangle wrote: post #143
vmarsy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's true, I don't think developers care if the money they got at the end of the month comes from a gift card or a credit card. 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.

Nobody knows that Google Play gift cards exist. 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.

Google Play gift cards have been available less than a month in most of the world. I'm not sure when they were first made available in the US.

Re: Android is for startups

#189

Post by grbalaffa »

akmiller wrote: post #130
grbalaffa wrote: post #98

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 201…

This is anecdotal (but frankly so is yours)... We have mainly been doing iOS apps but we are hearing demand from customers about having an option in Android so one of our developers (who is definitely much more of an Apple fan) has been experimenting with the Android SDK and he has been very impressed with the Android SDK. He has found many things to be far easier in the Android SDK than with iOS. His main complaint…

At least I gave an example. "Many things" are not just easier, but "far" easier? Like what? I've got plenty more examples, but I'd really like to hear about these "many" things which are "far" easier than in iOS.

Re: Android is for startups

#190

Post by jordanthoms »

brennenHN wrote: post #176

I love the point about iteration here, but I think this post is a little bit disingenuous. The problem with developing for Android as a startup is that baseline reliability is incredibly resource intensive. If you want your app to work on the most popular few devices, you will still have to spend a considerable amount of time and money testing the different configurations and fixing bugs that have nothing to do with…

Any specifics on that? Unless you are doing something really weird, there shouldn't be compatibility issues between recent devices like that. Generally the issues are with older devices that have very little ram etc, which are becoming less and less common.
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