Mika Mobile ends Android development
mikamobile.blogspot.com
Mika Mobile ends Android development
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#2Seems fine to me. No money being made, no money to pay for development. I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however.
(Bandwidth is, sadly, becoming a big issue these days, because nobody offers unlimited plans anymore. 5GB per month means one max-size app and maybe a few text messages before you start paying one billion dollars per nanobyte in overages. It's like 1980s long distance all over again.)
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#3Seems fine to me. No money being made, no money to pay for development. I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however. (Bandwidth is, sadly, becoming a big issue these days, because nobody offers unlimited plans anymore. 5GB per month means one max-size app and maybe a few text messages before you start paying one billion dollars per nanobyte in overages. It's like 1980s long distance all over again.)
"I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however."
You might not, but Mika Mobile sure sounds like it does.
"I would have preferred spending that time on more content for you, but instead I was thanklessly modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs, or pushing out patches to support new devices without crashing, or walking someone through how to fix an installation that wouldn't go through. We spent thousands on various test hardware. These are the unsung necessities of offering our apps on Android. Meanwhile, Android sales amounted to around 5% of our revenue for the year, and continues to shrink."
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#4I work for an app company and can verify his comments.
Apple has done a great job at getting its users to pay for apps. They've done this via:
1) Encouraging Developers to not price free apps (this happens sometimes in review, in their literature, etc.)
2) Capturing device owner's credit card info at the start (so buying an app is frictionless)
3) Removing low-quality, buggy, copycat, and junk apps from the store via their review process
Google, on the other hand, has done just about everything wrong if you want to make money from paid apps. I suspect this is because Google wants to make money via in-app ad impressions and with free apps that's the only way you can make any money (in-app purchasing notwithstanding).
1) No review encourages spyware, copycat apps, buggy or broken apps, etc.
2) Android's "return policy" (which has since been tweaked) encourages people to pirate apps anyway (it's super easy to do so)
3) Initially (I'm not sure if this is still the case) you could sign up for a market account without a credit card, thus leading to a lot of friction when it came to paying for an app (entering your CC information was a royal pain).
Also, I share the frustration with the internal v. external/removable storage problem. Our apps are traditionally larger (content-centric, with lots of high quality images, audio, video) and have always ran into problems with Android devices' limited on-board storage.
This was purely a cost decision by Google and a profit decision by vendors/carriers as vendors wanted to produce devices as cheaply as possible and make a killing on SD cards - sell a device with xxxMB storage and no SD card, then force the consumer to go out and buy an overpriced SD card (usually at point of sale).
This all makes Android a developer-hostile environment; yes it's easier to initially get setup on Android (no provisioning profile, etc.) but it's all pain after that. If I had a choice, and didn't make cross-platform apps w/ PhoneGap, I'd write iOS apps first/only.
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#5Seems fine to me. No money being made, no money to pay for development. I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however. (Bandwidth is, sadly, becoming a big issue these days, because nobody offers unlimited plans anymore. 5GB per month means one max-size app and maybe a few text messages before you start paying one billion dollars per nanobyte in overages. It's like 1980s long distance all over again.)
"I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however."
I am forced to call you out on this misinformation. It is the Android _phones_ and _users_. Android based platforms like the Nook Color and Amazon Fire both have good app revenue in my experience. Android phone revenue is at the bottom for the apps I sell. Of course, iOS is at the top.
I'm willing to listen to any counter-points you may have to back up your claim that it's not the Android ecosystem. Fire away.
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#6Seems fine to me. No money being made, no money to pay for development. I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however. (Bandwidth is, sadly, becoming a big issue these days, because nobody offers unlimited plans anymore. 5GB per month means one max-size app and maybe a few text messages before you start paying one billion dollars per nanobyte in overages. It's like 1980s long distance all over again.)
Apple caps 3g app downloads at 30mb I think. Any bigger than that and you need to use wifi or sync via iTunes.
It would be nice if Google would implement something like this for Android. I didn't even know about this limitation until today ( I'm an iPhone user/developer).
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#7Seems fine to me. No money being made, no money to pay for development. I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however. (Bandwidth is, sadly, becoming a big issue these days, because nobody offers unlimited plans anymore. 5GB per month means one max-size app and maybe a few text messages before you start paying one billion dollars per nanobyte in overages. It's like 1980s long distance all over again.)
Apple caps 3g app downloads at 30mb I think. Any bigger than that and you need to use wifi or sync via iTunes. It would be nice if Google would implement something like this for Android. I didn't even know about this limitation until today ( I'm an iPhone user/developer).
Apple just changed it to 50MB with the iOS5.1 update
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#8I would be interested to find out how MikaMobile did sales wise with their Kindle Fire version of Battleheart. It would be a good gauge to base what the total potential a developer has for supporting the Fire and ignoring the general Android market. I remember (back in the day) when they first announced Zombieville USA on iPhoneDevSDK, they have grown a great deal since then and I wish them all the best.
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#9For those who may not know, and because it's not mentioned in the blog post, Mika Mobile develops their games in Unity.
It's a testament to the challenge of developing games to work on all Android devices that even with Unity's support they still have to spend so much development effort on shaders and debugging device specific issues.
Re: Mika Mobile ends Android development
#10Seems fine to me. No money being made, no money to pay for development. I don't blame this on Android phones or users, however. (Bandwidth is, sadly, becoming a big issue these days, because nobody offers unlimited plans anymore. 5GB per month means one max-size app and maybe a few text messages before you start paying one billion dollars per nanobyte in overages. It's like 1980s long distance all over again.)
Apple caps 3g app downloads at 30mb I think. Any bigger than that and you need to use wifi or sync via iTunes. It would be nice if Google would implement something like this for Android. I didn't even know about this limitation until today ( I'm an iPhone user/developer).
Android App store warns you that you are about to start a large download via 3G and asks if you're sure you want to do so. Personally I find that a much better approach. Apple doesn't know the details of my contract and if I want to download 70 (or 170)MB over 3G, surely that's my prerogative and why should my phone stop me?