iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
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Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#2One of the most important things you learn when you're launching a startup is that the product has to match the market, and the market is never "everyone". You don't have that sort of marketing reach on a startup budget. Startups can get the word out through social media (people the founders know), people the founders and investors network with, through startup and early-adopter technology news (TC, HN, BetaList, ProductHunt, etc), through advertising if they have a budget for it, and, for a lucky few, through mainstream news if they're clever.
Social, networks and tech news are all going to be 'iPhone heavy', and although that is changing, it's still enough to make iOS a sensible choice to market to first.
TL;DR The fact that the Android market is bigger is irrelevant if you can't reach that segment of the market with your contacts and/or a very limited marketing budget.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#3The question is if you have haven't validated your product yet do you develop for iOS, Android or use a cross platform toolkit like PhoneGap. I think the answer will depend on what you have experience with, who your target market is and whether you want to target tablets (which still leans towards iOS in my view).
Validate on one platform and then expand to another if it works is my current approach but it definitely isn't the only one.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#4> I’ve talked to lots of Android and iOS teams, and they say if they implement the same app on both platforms, the development time is roughly the same, and testing on Android is mostly a non-issue, as you can do it on your computer in emulators.
Interesting. I've heard just the opposite, in fact: that iOS is significantly faster to develop on and that testing is a nightmare that must be done manually on-device. I would have liked the author to back this claim up with more than just anecdotes.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#5> If you look at this graph, in less than 12 months, Android will dominate in this final metric.
I can't really see that in the graph, and anyhow you can't really predict what's going to happen from previous performance or trends. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I don't see it as inevitable.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#6Instagram is a counter-example though.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#7I live in a tech bubble, but I see a pretty even distribution of iOS vs. Android devices. Is this a US versus Europe thing, perhaps?
Android phones and tablets seem pretty popular among UK geeks - at least as much as iOS. In fact, I frequently encounter among geeks a sort of snobbery against iOS - "it's eye candy for non-techy consumers". That view is not universal - like I say, it's a mixed picture - but it is significant.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#8Instagram is a counter-example though.
To what? The author is specifically talking about making money directly from your app, which Instagram didn't do until recently (well after they released an Android version). And even then, it looks like their monetization strategy is to sell what appears to be a very limited number of ads-as-posts.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#9> I’ve talked to lots of Android and iOS teams, and they say if they implement the same app on both platforms, the development time is roughly the same, and testing on Android is mostly a non-issue, as you can do it on your computer in emulators. Interesting. I've heard just the opposite, in fact: that iOS is significantly faster to develop on and that testing is a nightmare that must be done manually on-device. I wo…
I think a lot of this comes down to exactly what you're doing. For instance, if you're doing networking, getting fancy with the camera, or doing even slightly low-level OpenGL stuff, Android's likely to be more painful, especially in terms of testing, and old-version quirks.
Fun minor example; before Android 4.3 or so (and only about 25% of Android users are on >=4.3), if, using the default HTTP library, you make a request to a server that uses HTTP compression, and the request returns a successful no-content result, like 204, that'll trigger a null pointer exception in the guts of the HTTP library. There are lots of these quirks; by themselves they're minor, but they build up.
With things like the camera, it's worse, as vendor customisation comes into play.
Re: iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years
#10> I’ve talked to lots of Android and iOS teams, and they say if they implement the same app on both platforms, the development time is roughly the same, and testing on Android is mostly a non-issue, as you can do it on your computer in emulators. Interesting. I've heard just the opposite, in fact: that iOS is significantly faster to develop on and that testing is a nightmare that must be done manually on-device. I wo…
Both could be completely true for different scenarios. Maybe for many apps they are similar but for some that use phone features such as Bluetooth it might be much harder on Android. It might also depend on the level of polish you require, satisfactory apps may be as easy on both but to avoid any glitches you may need to do a lot of testing.