Should You Build for iOS or Android? Discover What 7 Mobile App Experts Say

http://blog.mobiversal.com/ios-or-android-first.html

by flaviuss • 13 years ago

21 47 13 years ago

blog.mobiversal.com

Tloewald2• 13 years ago

So basically four say iOS, one hedges, one says android first so you can get debugging out of the way since it's easy to catch up on iOS, and one says both at once.

wsc9812• 13 years ago

I find it funny that 1 developer advocates building for Android first, because it's harder, while others seem to advocate iOS first, because it is easier :)

Personally I'd say go iOS first (because it's an easier platform to develop for) and perhaps once the basics are done for the iOS app, start building the Android app side by side. Use Xamarin to build a shared core for both iOS / Android (think in terms of network communications, business logic, data parsing, perhaps SQLite storage etc...)

eonil8• 13 years ago

I am 98% sure that her company is using some hybrid solution rather than SDK. Otherwise, there's no situation which make sense.

2% exclusion for her mention for justice. If she has some her own belief on justice…

collyw• 13 years ago

What is considered harder about Android / easier about iOS? I haven't ever used objective C but didn't hear very good stuff about it from people that have used it. I know Java. Simple enough, fairly boring language.

vetinari5• 13 years ago

Of course it is more difficult, if you use Xamarin. Or other framework, that promises cross-system compatibility and subtly fails on all targets. Talk about self-inflicted pain.

If you really want some common, shared codebase, use something like j2objc, where it ends up native to both platforms.

jzzskijj• 13 years ago

Easy for me: App Store didn't approve the app because it was (apparently) against their set of rules. In Google Play it has been for months and the user base is constantly growing.

CodeWithCoffee2• 13 years ago

For context, what was your app? Were you aware that you would be pushing the App Store rules?

bookwormAT• 13 years ago

guidelines. The app store has guidelines, not rules. The decision for approval is completely up to Apple. They can approve some dirty porn scam and feature it if they want. Or they can disapprove an app that meets all of their guidelines if it pleases them.

threeseed3• 13 years ago

This may be the case now but it is pretty clear that Google is moving towards Apple's curation model.

indy• 13 years ago

What makes you think that? Developers can upload apps to the Play Store without Google's approval

jklp• 13 years ago

I think the problem is that the total market share of smartphones is a very poor metric to gauge Android or iOS dominance.

I can't find the link, but I remember reading on HN that a large majority of Android's market share isn't actually users who use their Android phones as a smartphone, but instead don't really care what phone they get, so long it was free with their plan i.e. think of the flip or candy bar phones from a few years ago.

I think maybe a more accurate measure would be to compare iOS to the higher end Android phones, like the S4s or the Nexus's, which I think will be a little closer in percentages.

vetinari5• 13 years ago

Price of handset and the usage as a smartphone are two orthogonal issues.

There are ZTE Blade users that do purchase apps, and there are iPhone users who do not use it as a smartphone, but as a fashion accessory. Your comparison would not assess what we need there.

zachlatta2• 13 years ago

We had this conversation while building our somewhat popular mobile game. Despite being a huge fan of Android, iOS remains significantly more profitable, especially in games.

CodeWithCoffee2• 13 years ago

I think that the primary reason that games are more profitable on iOS is because a lot of games are using the free-to-play + in app purchase model and there are a lot more iTunes accounts with credit cards linked that can make purchases compared to Google Play accounts, so Android games tend to rely more heavily on ads.

corresation2• 13 years ago

Your game is only available on iOS, so you aren't speaking from any personally observed metrics.

By the most recent metrics I've seen, the top 200 iOS apps pull in $18 million a day, while the top 200 Google Play store apps pull in $12 million. iOS still leads (courtesy of the lubrication of things like iTunes gift cards -- there will again be a huge bump after Christmas), but is there any rational player who looks at those numbers and thinks "Oh, I want no part of the latter"? And note that this difference has been closing very quickly (iOS is up 20% YoY, Android is up 242% YoY).

Which is exactly why the majority of apps are built cross-platform from the outset. Whether using tooling that enables it easily (e.g. Unity, Titanium, etc), or designing around abstracting from the platform.

zachlatta2• 13 years ago

We made our decisions through thorough conversations with some of the most successful free-to-play (that's probably a major factor) developers on Android and iOS. We're planning on making our backend platform-agnostic and then write frontends for iOS, Android, and others though.

BrokenPipe• 13 years ago

Personally I avoid iOS because of their restrictions. Investing on an iOS app is much bigger gamble than Android because of this.

threeseed3• 13 years ago

I've built a number of iOS, Android and Blackberry apps on my own and countless more for agencies around the world and not once had this problem. Apple's overall policy is really quite simple. Don't use private APIs, anything that could be considered to be anti-user or anything that is likely to embarrass Apple publicly.

It is frustrating that you can't do all the things you would like as a developer but infinitely less so then getting something working on 5 Android devices only for it not to work on the other 2.

vetinari5• 13 years ago

In android, it is similar - do not use private APIs and you will be fine. Yes, there are occassional bugs made by some vendors, but they are not showstopper, as you implied.

And you can produce bitcoin wallets, torrent clients and other harmless apps, that have potential to embarass Apple publicly.

aaronetz• 13 years ago

I think that for games, where the UI isn't probably going to be native, there is no (major) reason not to develop cross-platform. Engines like Unity or libgdx let you do just that. Other than testing, I don't see how iOS compatibility would require significant effort over an existing working Android game which was written with a cross-platform engine.

eonil8• 13 years ago

In context of majority… going Android first is sane only in these cases.

(1) You are willing to take far higher initial development/maintenance cost (for sanely working app) just to reach people with far less buying power.

(2) You need physically wired connection to user's device - no bluetooth - to connect a device where you can't make any assumption on hardware spec.

(3) You want to write an app where AppSore explicitly prohibits - such as spam, porn, piracy, illegal, malware, or potentially dangerous stuffs. (but does this make sense even on Android?)

pistle• 13 years ago

Higher dev/maint costs? Come on... are you kidding? Far less buying power? Fair, I guess.

Altogether... this is the way iOS dies. "We got the rich kids in America! Stay the course!"

When does iPhone 6 drop because the 5s bump will be gone after the holidays. This will be a fun discussion to review 12 months from now.

eonil8• 13 years ago

I doubt you're actually understanding the concept of cost… Or are you claiming that Android developers are a lot cheaper than iOS developers? About less than half? If so, that's fair claim…

Review 12 months later? Seriously, are you kidding me?

eonil8• 13 years ago

I love reason-less down-vote.

vetinari5• 13 years ago

I didn't downvote you, but from my perspective, it is not without reason.

You are providing talking points, that you believe are true, but without source data. No, appeal to common belief is not an evidence.

CJefferson• 13 years ago

I downvoted you. I'll also tell you why.

There are lots of reasons to get rejected by Apple other than the reasons you list. I haven't kept track recently but I know Apple still reject most things which allow user development or a user-visible programming language inside an app.

corresation2• 13 years ago

"You are willing to take far higher initial development/maintenance cost (for sanely working app) just to reach people with far less buying power."

The far higher development/maintenance cost claim is unsubstantiated, and is largely driven by talking point anecdotes. For instance the utter and complete incompetence of the BBC team who seem to have so much trouble delivering a simple video streaming application (which they bizarrely built around embedded flash. They represent every poor decision possible, yet always get held up as prophetic).

The far less buying power thing is a common and gross misunderstanding of the applicability of averages.

Imagine that you are making a fruit holder, and you aren't sure whether you should target people who eat bananas, or people who eat apples. So you do a survey of the potential markets.

Incomes of people who eat bananas $55235 $23737 $19083 $65928 $75239 $48679

Average income - $47,983.

Incomes of people who eat apples $62234 $57201 $53233

Average income - $57,556.

As someone making fruit cup holders, does this make the apple market a better market? Of course not. Yet that is exactly the flawed reasoning so commonly used to laughably discount Android -- using the fact that there are low-cost, accessible devices to try to marginalize the top-tier, luxury devices. Only reality doesn't work that way.

Google Play spending still lags iOS, largely as a mechanic of the lack of some of the top tier apps, limited access to the pay market in the Play Store in some countries, and the slowness of Play Store gift cards to pick up, but that gap is closing at a stunning pace (iOS app spending is up 20% YoY, while Android spending is up 235%).

w1ntermute• 13 years ago

the glaring truth is that most SmartPhones are still using Android 2.

Uh, what? More than 70% are running 4.0+ now[0]. This dude didn't even bother to check the proper statistics.

0: http://www.phonearena.com/news/New-Android-and-iOS-fragmenta...

threeseed3• 13 years ago

Actually you didn't bother to check the proper statistics. The Android numbers come from devices accessing the Play Store.

Useful for most Western markets. Less so for many other countries.

ogreyonder• 13 years ago

Do other markets not buy from the Play Store? Or rather, if they don't, how would you sell your app to them anyway? It is nonsense to develop a for-profit app tailored to people who can't buy it.

yla92• 13 years ago

That's exactly what I was trying to say. I am from Myanmar, which is pretty lagging in telecommunication area behind other countries. Only recently, people can buy the handset with very cheap price. Of course, mobile phone OS ratio of Android and iOS is like 10:1. Thanks to Huawei, anyway. I recently made an app and I am quite amazed that majority android version is 4+ and very little number of 2.3 .Thus, we aim to make more quality android app for the local.

mmahemoff• 13 years ago

"Creating an app for Android means taking in stride the inconsistency in hardware calibration, as there is a huge diversity in the Android market in terms of the brands that sell Android phones."

Please not this. The fragmentation argument sounded very clever in 2010, but it's just not true. The OS takes care of most device diversity just like OSs have for decades. It's true that users are on different OS versions, more so than iOS, meaning that you can't just assume everyone has the latest version, but that's standard for most software. It's not like everything breaks just because the user has a Sony phone.

Progressive enhancement, graceful degradation, and responsive design are well-understood, time-honored, practices for dealing with different platforms and devices. Also, Google's trick of updating Play services means older OSs now get a bunch of upgrades anyway.

njs12345• 13 years ago

I agree the fragmentation issue isn't anywhere near as bad as it's made out to be in general, but..

It's not like everything breaks just because the user has a Sony phone.

Even with Android 4+, there are still gotchas. For instance, I was recently bitten by this compass bug: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/android-developers/U3N...

It'd be nice if Google put more stuff in the support library, or even put notes about it in the docs, as they're clearly working around it in their own Android apps..

statictype• 13 years ago

I see the 'Android fragmentation problem' meme to be similar to the 'iPads are for consumption, not creation' meme.

Possibly overblown but also has a bit of truth to it.

krschultz• 13 years ago

Honestly iOS6 vs iOS7 is causing more pain than all the "fragmentation" on Android at the moment.

halostatue• 13 years ago

It's still true. When I was at SurfEasy, the guy doing Android development had to jump through lots of hoops to get the VPN working in the general case (and it wouldn't work at all pre-4.0.1, IIRC) and even then, we had to buy several specific phones because they had subtle bugs either in display, timing, or VPN handling.

iOS VPN development has its own nightmarish problems, but those were primarily handled through the provisioning process, not in getting the software to work on weird hardware combination.

jinushaun• 13 years ago

"It's not like everything breaks just because the user has a Sony phone."

Actually, recent experience developing for Android tells me it does. Can't tell you how many times I've had the app behave dramatically differently or crash on different devices. Even using a Nexus One as your baseline doesn't help. And if you work with the camera… welcome to hell. The Support Library is not a cure all.

yanivs• 13 years ago

Android development is a pain in the ass.

App Store app management (approval, updates, etc.) is a pain in the ass.

If you're building a social app then nowadays you almost MUST have both iOS & Android out of the box otherwise you're hurting any potential network effect.

knes• 13 years ago

Maybe up the text contrast a bit on the blog?

Should You Build for iOS or Android? Discover What 7 Mobile App Experts Say

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